Love God, love others. Period. Everything else hinges on these two commands; they wrap up the whole law. There are two things that I’ve been thinking through in regard to this.

For weeks, I’ve been praying for more of Jesus’ love—to experience it, to be filled with it, to overflow with it toward others. For weeks, we’ve been studying Jesus in the Gospel of Mark and I’m amazed that the crucifixion was only part of Jesus’ suffering. The flesh of Jesus endured constant jostling by the smelliest, dirtiest, nastiest people in the land (so much so that he didn’t know he was touched by a woman who had been vaginally bleeding for 12 years); suddenly, I realize how much I hate to be touched! I don’t even like to be bumped around by people I married and gave birth to and who have showered every day! And I’m claustrophobic!

He erupted into the world—encapsulated Himself in flesh and blood, subjected Himself to time in order to live the perfect life for us, so that… He could obliterate the bounds of time and flesh and meet us Spirit to spirit, dwell in and among each of us forever and always. Paul’s explanation of what the Holy Spirit means for us overwhelms me when I hold it up against the feelings of inadequacy I have as a mother to be everything to my children.

His love is not a modest love, its a fierce love that obliterated the boundary of His holiness to draw us into Him in Christ. To let Him see us in our imperfect states, to hear our voices and their imperfect thoughts, to share our feelings in their imperfect forms is the only appropriate response to this kind of love pursuit. It’s surrender. 

We surrender so that He can lavish us with His love, remind us we are forgiven, wash us white as snow. 

It was this realization that God wants to be with me in all of it, that simply letting Him have access to all of the depths of me somehow results in fully falling into Him limp but full of life, and suddenly my lungs open and the universe reveals wide open spaces to breathe.

I learned what the Bible means in 1 Corinthians 13 when it says, “love protects.” The Greek word for love in this case is agape—the kind of love only God can give. And the Greek word for protects is stego and means “to cover over in silence.” As soon as I heard this definition, my mind immediately flashed to this story of Noah and his sons.

Did you know, we have an enemy who literally stands before God accusing us day and night, pointing out our shame? (Rev 12:10) Like Ham, he laughs about us: “Look, God…look what your ‘little righteous one’ did! Come check it out. Do you see her shame?” If you try to imagine what you’re being accused of as Satan stands before God, it probably wouldn’t take long to come up with some ideas. Maybe the way you yelled at your kids before school this morning? Maybe the way you treated your husband in a moment of hurry? Maybe the entire cookie sleeve you ate from the pantry five minutes ago? Maybe you feel it’s so much worse than any of those examples and it’s not even in the same universe…abuse? Adultery? Slander? It doesn’t matter. My point is, the voice you have in your head accusing you and insisting you should feel ashamed is real. But our agape loving God already responded to every. single. accusation—both big and small.

When Naomi loses everyone and everything important to her, what she wants more than anything is to go back to her people—more importantly, her God. She returns, not because she thinks her life will get better; she goes back fully believing she will be desolate until the end of her days. But she goes back because she knows that ultimately in her emptiness, God will be enough. She is so certain that she’s willing to bear a treacherous journey back to Israel on her own. She has nothing left to lose; all she wants is God. 

As I laid my beaten head down on my pillow, I groaned, “I feel incapable.” As soon as the word incapable came out of my mouth, I knew I was right where God wants me to be, and I slipped into sweet sleep. It was no mistake that Romans 4 had been in my Bible study twice that week: “If you're a hard worker and do a good job, you deserve your pay; we don't call your wages a gift. But if you see that the job is too big for you, that it's something only God can do, and you trust Him to do it—you could never do it for yourself no matter how hard and long you worked—well, that trusting-Him-to-do-it is what gets you set right with God, by God. Sheer gift.” (Romans 4:4-5 MSG)