God's Love has no Limits

My son Brian has taught me so much.  (As have all of my children.)
But the one thing that he has really helped me with is in developing a deeper relationship with God through an appreciation of God's amazing love for me.  We have had many discussions about this and I always come away with a little better understanding of what it means to be loved by God.

So I have to admit that I have used parts of our conversations in my homily last weekend.  I also
"borrowed" a couple of his ideas from a presentation that he gave at his church a couple of weeks ago, too.

Thank for sharing your inspired words, my son.

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God loves everyone.

No matter what we do.

We are all sons and daughters of God and God will never stop loving us.

No matter what we do.

We have heard about God’s love since we were kids and listened to stories from the Gospels about Jesus’ love for us.  We have heard the story of the Good Shepherd many times and in our heads, we know that God loves us.

But,

Do we truly believe in our hearts and our souls that God loves us?

As human beings, we have a human understanding of the word love.  Our concept of the word love is connected to feelings of pleasure and satisfaction, of happiness and a world of perfection.

But God’s love for us is different.  It is not all about feeling good and being safe.  God’s love for us is all about mercy and peace.

This has been a most difficult week where the news has been filled with stories of violence, death and suffering.  We have heard about the innocent who have lost their lives or who are suffering because of the choices made by others.  Many who have witnessed the pain inflicted on these innocent people are struggling to understand how a loving God could allow this to happen.  They ask, “How could God possibly love us if He allows the innocent to suffer?” 

This is never an easy question to answer and one that no one can ever fully understand.  We talk about God’s ways and God’s plan for us and we somehow try to infuse the consequences of our human choices into this equation.  What we forget is that God gave mankind the gift of free will, the freedom to make choices, and how we use that gift affects our ability to experience God’s love.

When God gave mankind the gift of free will, he knew what a struggle this was going to be for us, because God knew of the presence of evil, of Satan, in our world.  God has been engaged in a battle with evil since the fall of Adam and Eve and he knows that, by giving us the ability to make choices, some of us would be drawn into darkness because of our inability to avoid temptation.  God knew that we would make choices driven by our human desires that would be contrary to the peace that he offered through his own love.  And he knew that the choices that we made that would lead us into darkness would affect others around us, causing them pain and suffering.  Yet, still, he loved us enough to allow us to make these choices.

What we too often forget, especially when bad things happen and the innocent suffer, is that no matter what we do, or how far we wander, God is never far away.  He never abandons us.  God understands we are going to make bad choices, that we are going to pursue false avenues of happiness, seeking love in the wrong places.  God understands that we are going to harm others,  and cause them pain, even the innocent who don’t deserve it.  Even as we are drawn into the darkness of evil, God is still with us, waiting for us to call out to Him and be rescued.  God’s love for us is so great that it doesn’t matter how many times we have denied him, hurt him or walked away from Him.  He will follow us and love us simply because we are his children.

We wonder why God allows suffering and we believe that God’s love for us should be on our terms, doing for us what we want him to do.  But God allows suffering,  often the consequence of human choice, so that his children can become closer to him.  We tend to ignore God when things are going well, but when things are difficult, we turn to Him.  Sometimes it is in anger, sometimes it is because we need comfort, and sometimes it is because we have no one else to turn to.  Whatever the reason, God uses these times to enter into our hearts and let us know of his mercy and forgiveness.  He wraps his arms around those who are suffering bringing them peace and consolation through the loving care of others and the promise of new life that became ours through his own suffering, death and resurrection.  God allows us to suffer so that we can turn to Him and truly experience his divine love, one that is unconditional and everlasting.   God is ready to lead us from darkness to light.  We only need to follow Him.

I want everyone to repeat after me:

“I am a child of God.”

“God loves me because I am his child.”

Take these words with you today and when you begin to worry that you are alone, when you begin to wonder if God is present in a world where evil seems to prevail, when you suffer physically or emotionally because of the choice of others, remember that you are a child of God.  Jesus, the Good Shepherd is following you wherever you go, just waiting for you to be found. 

 

God may not give you all of the answers that you seek when your pray,

but God will give you the mercy and peace that you need.

Embrace his gift.