It's Not About Me - Max Lucado [15]
Could this be? I decided to find out. I called a water conservationist. “That’s right,” he affirmed. “We estimate. We try to measure. But the exact quantity? No one knows.” Remarkable.We use it, depend upon it, would perish without it ... but measure it? We can’t.
Bring to mind another unmeasured pool? It might. Not a pool of water but a pool of love. God’s love. Aquifer fresh. Pure as April snow. One swallow slackens the thirsty throat and softens the crusty heart. Immerse a life in God’s love, and watch it emerge cleansed and changed.We know the impact of God’s love.
But the volume? No person has ever measured it.
Moral meteorologists, worried we might exhaust the supply, suggest otherwise. “Don’t drink too deeply,” they caution, recommending rationed portions. Some people, after all, drink more than their share. Terrorists and traitors and wife beaters—let such scoundrels start drinking, and they may take too much.
GOD’S LOVE . . .
ONE SWALLOW SLACKENS
THE THIRSTY THROAT
AND SOFTENS THE
CRUSTY HEART.
But who has plumbed the depths of God’s love? Only God has.“Want to see the size of my love?” he invites.“Ascend the winding path outside of Jerusalem. Follow the dots of bloody dirt until you crest the hill. Before looking up, pause and hear me whisper,‘This is how much I love you.’”
Whip-ripped muscles drape his back. Blood rivulets over his face. His eyes and lips are swollen shut. Pain rages at wildfire intensity.As he sinks to relieve the agony of his legs, his airway closes. At the edge of suffocation, he shoves pierced muscles against the spike and inches up the cross. He does this for hours. Painfully up and down until his strength and our doubts are gone.
Does God love you? Behold the cross, and behold your answer.
God the Son died for you.Who could have imagined such a gift? At the time Martin Luther was having his Bible printed in Germany, a printer’s daughter encountered God’s love. No one had told her about Jesus. Toward God she felt no emotion but fear. One day she gathered pieces of fallen Scripture from the floor. On one paper she found the words “For God so loved the world, that he gave . . . ” The rest of the verse had not yet been printed. Still, what she saw was enough to move her. The thought that God would give anything moved her from fear to joy. Her mother noticed the change of attitude. When asked the cause of her happiness, the daughter produced the crumpled piece of partial verse from her pocket. The mother read it and asked,“What did he give?” The child was perplexed for a moment and then answered, “I do not know. But if He loved us well enough to give us anything, we should not be afraid of Him.”1
Had God given his children a great idea or a lyrical message or an endless song . . . but he gave himself. “[God the Son] loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God” (Ephesians 5:2 NIV).What species of devotion is this? Find the answer under the category “unfailing.” The holiness of God demanded a sinless sacrifice, and the only sinless sacrifice was God the Son. And since God’s love never fails to pay the price, he did. God loves you with an unfailing love.
England saw a glimpse of such love in 1878. The second daughter of Queen Victoria was Princess Alice. Her young son was infected with a horrible affliction known as black diphtheria. Doctors quarantined the boy and told the mother to stay away.
But she couldn’t. One day she overheard him whisper to the nurse, “Why doesn’t my mother kiss me anymore?” The words melted her heart. She ran to her son and smothered him with kisses.Within a few days, she was buried.2
What would drive a mother to do such a thing? What would lead God to do something greater? Love. Trace the greatest action of God to the greatest attribute of God—his love.
But how does God’s love square with the theme of this book? After all, “It’s not about me.” If it’s not about me, does God care about me? God’s priority is his glory.