The love of God

This afternoon I had coffee with a friend.  It was great to visit with her again.  We haven't had a time for coffee in several years so today was special.

She wanted to hear about my time away from the church and what I learned.  What was to be just an hour went into nearly two.  We talked about what my wife and I discovered in our time away.  We talked about what I read.  But most of all we talked about the love of God.

I think most Christians believe that God loves them, but have never really known that love.  That was something she had prayed I would find and indeed I did.  I found it in a gift I had held for someone else for more than 40 years.  

The bible describes in wonderful detail how much God loves us.  It is the reason for the gospel story and the high cost God was willing to pay to purchase his lost love back, but many do not really understand it.  We often have so much baggage from our past, from our childhood, that it's hard to see how grand and glorious that love is.

All this to say that the most important discovery and treasure of any life is the discovery of God's love.  It's much better than you could possibly imagine and more glorious than you even know.  If you aren't sure about this "Christian thing" it's simply described in this way- God loves us and has paid a very high price to purchase us from slavery, to take us "home with him" and all he asks is that we say yes to this wonderful gift and give him our lives.