Thursday: I was asked to take on the challenge of designing for Africa International Missions. Of course I took it. It's designing and helping people, and I'm doing it pro bono to give God thanks for giving me such talent. Then my friend/now coworker informed me this would be going out to a few million people... Oh boy. That's a big more than I was expecting and because of that I was very honored to be asked to design for them. God is good.
Friday: I was allowed to leave work early today. 11:30 to be exact, which allowed me to go to lunch with a few friends and then curl up in bed and watch How I Met Your Mother while the rain came down. I love the rain. It you want to hear an amazing song about rain/water listen to Only Water by Brandon Heath. One of my all time favorites.
Saturday: This morning I got coffee with my friend Becca. We both can talk. A lot. But when we talk it's never shallow subjects. That's why I love talking to her. She asked me to email her about something we talked about so she could remember it and instead of just sharing it with her I wanted to share it with everyone.
Something she asked me really made me ponder on life and human nature. She asked if humans can love unconditionally. At first I said I believed so, but as I started thinking, if we were able to love unconditionally then what would be different between God and us. Isn't unconditional love a perfect love? Has a human ever been perfect? Ok, not counting Jesus. But really, take a moment to think about this. Our world is broken. We all live in sin. Even if we want more than anything to live sinless lives, we are humans and that isn't possible. So since we are all sinners then we can't show unconditional love. We can try our hardest but we will let people down. If we didn't then there would be no reason to rely so much on God for love, trust, strength, peace, hope. Not being able to love unconditionally does not mean we fail at loving others. We can still show love and most importantly show people Christ's love. But we will fail, we are allowed to fail. Nowhere in the Bible does is state that we aren't allowed to fail.
And that brings me to my second topic. We also discussed God's love for His people. When I mean His people I'm referring to the world, not the Old Testament Israelites or the New Testament Christians. Many people, believers and non, believe God is to be feared because He punishes. He's a hard God who can't stand sin. Well, I believe those people read the Bible with their eyes closed. This past semester I spend my afternoons reading the Old Testament and I spend three days a week in a Bible class on the study of Jeremiah through Malachi . And never during that time did I once see a God bent on destroying humans. I saw a Husband who took back His unfaithful bride over and over. If you read the law books of the Bible you won't find a single sacrifice to cleanse someone of idolatry. That's because God entered into a covenant when He accepted the Israelites as His people. Another word for marriage is covenant. God entered into a marriage. Idolatry equaled adultery.
When His bride worshiped idols instead of Him, they committed adultery. In that culture women were stoned to death if they were guilty of that crime. It caused great shame for the husband and his way to regain his pride was to kill her. But for years God took His bride back. He forgave them over and over for their unfaithfulness. If you read the book of Hosea, which I highly recommend, you see this kind of relationship being played out by two humans. God told Hosea to marry a prostitute and no matter what she did he was to stay with her and love her. There was even a point where his wife was being bet on by other men to see who would be taking her home. Hosea, to make his wife stay with him for a week, had to win that bet. How humiliating is that? To sit there, with other men, who he most likely knew by the way, and pay to keep his wife in his house. God does that! Every time we sin, every time we decide to love something more than Him, we are committing the same sins. Could you do that? Could you take someone back that you put your trust in if they didn't seem to care; if they constantly left you for something they thought was more worthy of their love?
Then God decided He had enough. He would send His bride into exile so she would realize how good she had it. He did it out of love! It wasn't a punishment, it was a training session. It was to teach. And because He loved us so much He brought us back from the wilderness, back into a land of milk and honey. He once again called us His people and this time He sent His son to die for all of our sins: past, present, and future. He wrote the laws on our hearts and gave us the Holy Spirit so we would never forget. He couldn't forget about us forever. He loves us too much. Please, try to remember that when tough times are upon you. Our Father, who loves unconditionally, is not trying to punish you. He merely wanted you to see. He stretches us with hardships so that we may grow. Don't turn your back on Him, because He sure hasn't turned His on you.
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