Last week I woke up and cranked out a cup of coffee for myself before the day’s responsibilities lined up to receive their proper attention. I had gone to bed early the night before. In fact, I had gone to bed before anyone else in our family, which generally happens never in our life. But lately I have been weary in my bones, tired long before I lay my head on the pillow, and on that particular night, I craved my bed like my teenage sons crave a fresh game of Fortnite with their friends.
So Mama laid it down early.
Come to find out, Morgan had a hard time convincing the kids to go to bed. He tucked our daughter in and then went upstairs only to find a boy reading a book and shoo him into bed, after which he discovered our daughter back up for some exceedingly important reason, and then he heard another boy coming downstairs with an even more exceedingly important reason to not go to bed. Putting a house full of kids to bed feels like this:
So that next morning, while I sipped my coffee, I wasn’t surprised when my daughter got up and told me the bedtime routines had been a little complicated. But then she astounded me by saying something that is completely true about every human being I know.
“I had to go to bed all alone. I felt so unloved.”
I looked at her and smiled, “So, one night with a less-than-ideal bedtime routine undid ten years of consistent, intentional love?”
My gentle teasing slipped through some unseen crack in her reasoning. She felt the full blessing of perspective; she saw that even in the silent darkness of her bedroom late at night when her parents are sleeping, she’s loved.
Then she laughed and got super cute and saucy, “Yes. I suppose it did.”
Even I heard the voice of God within us and around us and above us singing out the one note that tunes all the others:
{Baby, you will always be loved.}
But I’ve been thinking about this for days and days now. Why is it so easy for us to feel unloved? Why do our hearts so quickly lose their security in our belovedness?
It got me thinking about Eve and Cain, who also forgot how loved they were, and consequently made some very bad choices with some pretty devastating consequences.
Eve was deceived to believe the limits and laws of God were unnecessary. Surely she should know everything God knows. Surely she could eat the fruit and not die. She let go of God’s consistent, intentional love and reached for a piece of forbidden fruit.
Cain was deceived and believed God’s approval of a person’s work was directly connected to God’s love for that person. Even further, he didn’t just want to earn God’s love through his works; Cain didn’t want his brother to be more loved than he was. So he let go of God’s belovedness and reached out to murder his brother and climb the ladder of approval and success by force and power.
But through all of it, God’s love for Eve and Cain never changed, just as our love for our daughter never changed on that less-than-typical night- just as God’s love for me and for you has never ebbed or changed. He’s never once regretted how he came to rescue us from our deepest despair. God hasn’t forgotten the refugees lined up for a chance at a better life. He hasn’t neglected to care for the sick babies in the NICU or your lonely neighbor whose family lives too far away to help her cope with her needs.
Mother Theresa once said this:
“The fruit of silence is prayer; the fruit of prayer is faith; the fruit of faith is love; the fruit of love is service; the fruit of service is peace… Let us radiate the peace of God and so light His light and extinguish in the world and in the hearts of all men all hatred and love for power. Today, if we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other-that man, that woman, that child is my brother or my sister.”
If we step into a place where the love of God seems silent, it’s by faith that we trust God’s belovedness has brought us there. It requires we securely hold tightly to his love and trust that our prayers and our faith and our love and our service are his answer to the neglect and pain the world has laid upon us all.
Evil always begins with forgetfulness. We forget that God’s best miracles are woven with sacrifice and suffering. We forget that Jesus warned us that we would face great troubles in this life, but our hearts only needed to remember that he had overcome the world. We forget that God’s love doesn’t ebb and flow with our circumstances. We forget that we belong to each other and to God- that we are all made in the image of God, and therefore deserving of kindness, compassion, and love.
The silent place is where the battle begins. Eternal love and peace is where it ends.
***
Lord, help us to be people who remember that the love of God has covered us all with equal standing before him. Remind us how our feelings are often not the truth. Show us how loving God and loving others makes it possible for us to overcome the world and all its deceitful lies about how we will never be worthy of what you’ve already given us: yourself. Allow your joy over us to strengthen us so we won’t reach out and make choices that harm us and the people around us. Most of all, help us to belong to one another today. Amen
