Unconditional Love

“For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord”

Romans 8:38‑39 (NIV)

Have you noticed that we can often learn as much from our children as they learn from us?  

I once heard a story by an old preacher that nicely illustrates this.

A little girl decorated a box with gold wrapping paper and left it under the Christmas tree. Her father was furious. Money was tight, and he punished the little girl for wasting some of it on such extravagance. Nevertheless, the little girl brought the gift to her father the next morning and said, “This is for you, Daddy.” 

The father was embarrassed by his earlier overreaction when  he realized the gift was for him. But when he  opened the gift  his anger flared again, because he discovered the box was empty.  “Don’t you know that when you give someone a present, there’s supposed to be something inside of it?” he scolded her.

The little girl looked up at him with tears in her eyes and said, “Oh, Daddy it’s not empty. I blew kisses into the box. All for you, Daddy.” The father was crushed. He put his arms around his little girl, and he begged her forgiveness.

He kept that gold box by his bed for years. Whenever he was discouraged, he would take out an imaginary kiss and remember the love of the child who had put it there. 

In a very real sense, each of us has been given a gold container filled with unconditional love from God. The apostle Paul wrote, “…giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the kingdom of light. For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption and the forgiveness of sins.” [Col 1:12-13.]

Because we are in Christ, the Son of God, who is the beloved of his Father, we share with Christ in all the good things of his life with the Father through the Holy Spirit. And this is a love that will never diminish or fade.

While we face those times when it might seem as if God has left us to make it on our own, or those times when it appears as if we cannot go any further in life, remember that there is no more precious possession anyone could hold than that gold box filled with the love of God.

Prayer

Thank you for the unconditional love of Jesus towards me, and help me to remember that love in times of distress.

Amen

Study by Joseph Tkach