Messages today are very easily sent. This second I could bring up Skype on my computer screen and not only hear and talk with my niece in Hungary; I could see her, as well, and she, me.
My phone is sitting just feet from me. If I grabbed it now, I could press a few buttons, and instantly my daughter, sitting three miles away in her algebra class, would open her phone and read the very words I'd typed from my living room.
This morning I was reading passages about God's love. And I thought about the cross. Yes, the essential important work of redemption was done through Christ's death and resurrection. But the cross also carries with a message from God: "I love you." I know we hear and see evidence of God's love all around us, but nothing proclaims His love as clearly and as loudly as the cross of Christ.
My brother-in-law, once he realized he loved my sister, packed some brown bags with meals and rode his motorcycle in the cold a great distance from western Canada to Chicago, Illinois to let her know of his love for her. I always found that sweet.
And when my dad was paralyzed from the neck down, he could only type using a retainer on the roof of his mouth which had buttons he could click with his tongue. How inspired I was when the first words he typed were "I love you," and we printed the message and gave it to my mom (who still has it on her refrigerator ten years later). He overcame a huge obstacle to send his message.
But no lover has ever traveled nearly as far as Jesus, who left heaven to come to earth, and no one has overcome as great an obstacle as Jesus had to show us the love of the Father, that being our sin! He traveled the distance and removed that which was in the way of the message of His love being delivered to its recipients.
This morning I find myself rejoicing in the love of the Father and thanking Him for his love that found its way to me.
I will continue to receive it, yield to it, wallow in it and let it have its life-changing way in me.
