Last Wednesday we started Cynthia Heald’s Becoming a Woman who Loves study.  For the next three months or so we will be studying God’s agape love and our debt to love others once we experience His.

At some point someone shared how much she appreciated God’s kind patience and gentleness and I joked that it often seemed more like a tidal wave.  We laughed while knowledge flashed through the room of the hard places He brings us to: the consequences of our waywardness, long weary illnesses, grief in the night, pouring out the heart in prayers that seem unanswered, mother’s burdens for her children.  And His love, mysterious and relentless, pursuing us in the midst of it all, calling us to come close and worship anyway, because He is faithful and good, and He never stops loving us.  As C.S.Lewis wrote, “We are, not metaphorically but in very truth, a Divine work of art, something that God is making, and therefore something with which He will not be satisfied until it has a certain character (The Problem of Pain, p.42).” More like a crashing ocean than a warm fuzzy blanket, but larger and more real because of it.

So as we dive into this exploration of God’s agape love, I feel sure it will not be weeks spent on feel-good sentiments and placid assurances of a Father’s acceptance.  He is a loving Father, but He is God Almighty, the Maker and Ruler of the universe.  The love He calls us to is “the rugged choice to do the right thing” (Jon Tal Murphree).  The Beloved One we follow hung on the cross and in the midst of His suffering called out forgiveness.  As we study, may our own love grow more rugged and strong in the everyday places of life.

“He is jealous for me, loves like a hurricane; I am a tree, bending beneath the weight of His wind and mercy.  When all of a sudden, I am unaware of these afflictions eclipsed by glory, and I realize just how beautiful You are and how great Your affections are for me.  Oh, how He loves us….” (John McMillan, How He Loves)