Readings – Psalm 8, Eph 3:14-21
When I was a student in Dundee, I used to go for ‘stargazing stomps’ down to Magdelene Green to clear my head. On many crisp, clear nights, I would stop and gaze at God’s handiwork. It was awesome to look up and see the star-studded night sky.
The heavenly splendour that stirred the shepherd David so long ago, gripped me. Yet, looking at the vast universe made me feel incredibly small. I was just one little speck on planet earth, which itself was only part of just one solar system. As David wrote :
‘ I look up at your macro-skies, dark and enormous,
Your handmade sky-jewellery,
Moon and stars mounted in their settings.
Then I look at my micro-self and wonder,
Why do you bother with us?
Why take a second look our way?’
(Psalm 8:3-4 – The Message)
In this day and age, as we strive to feel significant in the crowd, as we struggle with feelings of low self-esteem, we too may wonder why God bothers with us.
But any thoughts of insignificance should vanish when we consider our status. For though just part of creation, we are children of the Creator! His hands that set the stars in space, that flung the planets into orbit are holding us, and moulding us and keeping us in place! Wow! We should be overwhelmed by the present reality of God!
This Creator God is our very own God. He not only bothers with us, He loves us – He really, really loves us, with a deep, unfathomable agape love. We have been ‘loved with everlasting love, led by grace that love to know’ as the hymn says.
Paul wrote ‘And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge – that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God’ (Eph 3:17-19 – NIV)
David wrote ‘Your love, O Lord, reaches to the heavens, Your faithfulness to the skies. How priceless is your unfailing love!’ (Psalm 36:5 & 7 – NIV)
God’s love is boundless. We will never fully grasp or understand it. It goes beyond our dimensions. It just can’t be measured.
It is so wide that it encompasses the whole world.
It is so long that it can reach us just where we are, when we need to feel loved the most.
Its height is higher than our highs and its depths are deeper than our downers!
It is like a waterfall, deep and never ending from before time began to eternity!
Paul says ‘May your roots go down deep into the soil of God’s marvellous love’ (Eph 3:17 NLT)
May we draw nourishment and energy for daily life as we meditate on the awesome love God has for us.
‘And I ask him that with both feet planted firmly on love, you’ll be able to take in with all Christians the extravagant dimensions of Christ’s love. Reach out and experience the breadth! Test its length! Plumb the depths! Rise to the heights! Live full lives, full in the fullness of God.
‘God can do anything you know – far more than you could ever imagine or guess or request in your wildest dreams! He does it not by pushing us around but by working within us, His Spirit deeply and gently within us’ (Eph 3:17- 20 – The Message)
‘How high and how wide
How deep and how long
How sweet and how strong
Is Your love
How lavish Your grace
How faithful Your ways
How great is Your love O Lord!’
Blessings,
Ruth x
*Edited from ‘It’s all about love’
Blessed! 