Enduring Love

I have to admit that yesterday, as we walked into church, I really didn't want to be there. It wasn't the church.

It was me.

My heart was a conflicted mess and I don't do well when it feels that way.

I felt unloved.

And I felt unloveable.

And then the music began, and the first song:

Give thanks to the Lord, our God and King,

His love endures forever.

As I soaked in those words, which hope longed for but self-condemnation denied, there followed the sweet whispering in my heart, "You are my beloved. You are loved."

I was completely overwhelmed.

Not just because of the humbling fact that the God of the universe reassured my heart of His love, but because I was agonizingly cognizant of how deeply undeserving I was of this love.

His love endures forever.

It endures my bad moods.

It endures my inconsistencies.

It endures my contradictions.

It endures my hot spells and cold spells.

(And it endures my hot flashes, my emotional unreasonableness, and my mood swings.)

It endures my angry outbursts.

It endures my worry, fretting, and complaining.

His love for me is not limited by time, distance, location, weather, circumstance, or situation.

Because His love is based upon Who He is, not who I am or how well I am behaving.

So at a moment that I could not think of another thing to thank Him for (and there were untold number of things to thank Him for- I just couldn't think of them in the jumbled mess of my mind), at that moment I was filled with the healing, sustaining, completing, invigorating fact that My God Loves Me and that Love Endures Forever!

For the Lord is good;

His lovingkindness is everlasting,

And His faithfulness to all generations.

Ps 100:5