Treasured

God loves each of us as if there were only one of us.
~Saint Augustine of Hippo (354-430)

The sweet, fragrant curves of your body, the soft, spiced contours of your flesh invite me, and I come. I stay until dawn breathes its light and night slips away. You’re beautiful from head to toe, my dear love, beautiful beyond compare, absolutely flawless. Come with me from Lebanon, my bride. Leave Lebanon behind, and come. Leave your high mountain hideaway. Abandon your wilderness seclusion, where you keep company with lions and panthers guard your safety. You’ve captured my heart, dear friend. You looked at me, and I fell in love. One look my way and I was hopelessly in love!

~ Him, to each of us in The Song of Songs chapter 4

There are many gorgeous truths in His Word beloved. This one, though, seems unfathomable.

G_d Loves us.

Yes, we say, of course. We learned that in Sunday School. He died for us on that horrible cross. He rose again to save us from our horrible past. He will save us to the uttermost on that Great Day. We will be partakers in His Kingdom… and this Kingdom will have no end! So very, very, very true!

And, we say, He loves us like a good Father loves His child.

True and closer… But not close enough. There is more. And the picture of His Love for us is incomplete without a deeper understanding and acceptance of all His Love for us.

G_d Loves us like a boy really loves a girl he really loves. G_d loves us like a girl loves a boy she really loves…. And it is this Love that makes Him weak in the knees when He thinks about us. And He thinks about us all the time. He is simply obsessed with us. He has, for eternity past, been thinking about ways to romance us and simply ravish us with His Love.

G_d Loves us like a good husband loves a good wife. The man (and the woman) are complete, in and of themselves – for they always had Him. Yet, somehow their lives become even more full by the completeness brought about by the jealous and unifying Love of marriage.

Get this beloved. G_d digs you.

You bring pleasure to Him.

You are His portion.

You make Him happy.

You give Him delight.

You fulfill and already infinitely full G_d.

He does not need us. And He wants us desperately. And it is in this needlessness that we see the endlessness and beauty of the infinite Love He is.

Oh my.

Yeah.

For, if His Grace is an ocean, we are still sinking into its glorious depths. We have only touched the surface of His goodness towards us. Oh how He Loves us.

Can we see it? What if we caught just the merest glimpse of this and rested in the light of its truth. How might our lives get Lived when we begin to comprehend His Love towards us? Would not fear be gone (as it should)? Would we not begin to really love others? Would we not begin to live lives of powerful and peaceful abundance?

Surely this is true.

Oh how He Loves us beloved. Oh how He Loves us. Oh how He Loves us.

In the very beginning, when this great universe lay in the mind of God, like unborn forests in the acorn-cup; long ere the echoes waked the solitudes, before the mountains were brought forth, and long ere the light flashed through the sky, God loved his chosen creatures.

~Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834-1892)

* Thanks to David Crowder and his band for the prompting of some of the wording of this entry.