THE FATHER’S LOVE
In late September 2006, I was visiting some friends in Thun, a beautiful Swiss city seemingly buried in the midst of towering Alpine mountain peaks. My host and escort during my one week stay there was a highly knowledgeable guide, which was not surprising since he was a serving senior anti-terrorist police officer. He knew the terrain so well. He had to, I guess, in order to protect it well. Eager to please me and to make my trip as memorable as possible, he took me on an expensive excursion to a place called the Top of Europe on the Alpine mountain range. Just before we got to the peak, at about 3400m above sea level, I stood back to survey the sprawling, breathtaking landscape around me. The usual story-book-picture-perfect Swiss landscape was there before me, but there was something else. I saw shimmering in blinding light, the majestic triple peaks of the Alps, Eigle, Monk, and Jung Frau. And covered in the pristine coat of ancient glacier it was a sight to behold. I stood there, for some minutes I was lost in deep reflection. I felt so small and insignificant before the God whose hand has made such a colossal structure. At the same time I felt God’s presence enveloping the entire mountain. It was an experience I will relieve for many more years to come. I was really so close to my heavenly home I thought. “Patrick it is YOUR FATHER’S gift”, these words from my guide jolted me back to my senses. He said it with a voice so eerie I taught an angel had spoken to me. These words seemed at that time to rebound several times off the monolithic granite mountains that surrounded us. And even as I type these words I still hear echoes of it in the ears of my spirit. I knew God brought me there to hear those words while beholding his mighty works of creation. I found myself on my knees in worship:
“For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom his whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. 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 3:14-19(NIV)
In that instant I felt the Love of the Father in a way I have never felt it before. In a sense it was my very first encounter with the tangible expression of the Father’s love. The Father’s love cannot be described, it can only be experienced.
It dawned on me in a most personal way that the motivation for the Father for sending the son into this world was love. The reason could only be love, for the world was not in any position to deserve such an awesome sacrifice. The most famous verse in the entire Bible tells us this. "God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son." (John 3:16)
The reality today is that is very difficult for people to believe that God loves them, even though they have heard so much being preached and taught about it. I fought with that truth too. They just cannot understand or comprehend the reality of God's love in their lives. They can't grasp something they cannot see. All that is screaming at us from the TV and the media each day speak of a broken and unjust world. Daily we are inundated with the blatant display of injustice, cruelty and viciousness. It becomes very difficult to imagine a Loving Father watching and not doing anything to stem the tide. We need to know how to recognize and experience the love of the Father. How to embrace it, nurture it, grow in it, or truly enjoy it. And without knowing and realizing that God loves us we cannot possibly have hope in our lives. We will not be aware of the purpose or the meaning that God wants us to have concerning our lives. God wants us to know a lot about him, but the most important thing that he wants us to know about him is the tremendous and awesome love that he has for each and every one of us. That is why the apostle John could write at 1 John 4:8 "The one, who does not love, does not know God, for God is love".
In the natural, no slave ever trusts its master no matter how benevolent he may appear. The relationship between the slave and his master can be likened to that of the cat and the mouse even at the best of times. The slave only measures the master’s approval by the amount of favour he receives at any particular time. One of the greatest mistakes that we make is that we measure God's love for us by our present circumstances. We reason that if things are going bad for us, then God must really hate us. But if the birds are singing and the sun is shining, and we are happy, then God must really love us. We also usually assume that God works only through the successes we have, and not through our weaknesses. The truth is that our circumstances are constantly changing but God's love is always with us. His love for you does not ride the waves of your feelings. At the same time it is hard for us to understand, why God should allow bad things to happen to good people. But faith in God does not mean trusting God to stop the bad storms in our life. Faith and trust in God are things which enable us to walk through those periods of hurt and sorrow and come out victorious. We must trust God and believe that when trouble occurs, he is going to give us the ability to cope with it. We are wrong if we expect belief and faith to be an exemption from suffering. If anyone should doubt this then just look at what the world did to Jesus. Instead, the storms of life should become workshops where we can practice our faith in God's greatness.
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