An Unyielding Love
This Advent season, we’re inviting you to participate with us in reading Advent & Christmas: Wisdom from Henri J.M. Nouwen, a daily Advent devotional. This blog series comes alongside Nouwen’s devotionals to offer personal reflections on the daily reading. Today’s post is a companion to Day 16 “Divine Heart of Love”. Find more resources and follow along with this series at summitdenver.org/Advent.
Have you ever been hurt by someone you love? I’m going to go out on a limb here and assume you have been.
How did that make you feel? Were you thinking, “Gosh, I just love that person even more and would do anything for them right now.”? I’m sure that wasn’t your response.
Let’s take it a step further. Have you ever been hurt repeatedly by someone you love?
I’ll bet you weren’t waiting anxiously for them with open arms the next time you saw them. No, quite the opposite. You probably built up a wall around yourself in an attempt to protect yourself. Maybe you even tried to drive them out of your life. Either way, I’m sure you treated that relationship with a much more reserved, cautious, and calculated approach, perhaps even from a distance. You were probably afraid to love them again.
I can’t stop thinking about why God left his position in Heaven to be with us here on earth. Not only to live as a human, but to die as a human. For you. For me…For people who hurt Him.
This Advent season I find myself not only meditating on the coming of Christ, but also his life and sacrifice. Sounds a bit like Lent, I know, but I can’t stop thinking about why God left his position in Heaven to be with us here on earth. Not only to live as a human, but to die as a human. For you. For me. For people that He loves more than we can ever imagine. For people who hurt Him. Repeatedly. But that didn’t stop him from taking His love for us to the next level. Why?
Advent has helped me to understand the deep, deep love the Father has for us. The Old Testament stories that we read to our children each day during Advent remind me how long, how hard He’s been pursuing us.
Advent reminds me of all the times His heart was broken by His own children - by me - yet He still pursues me.
Advent reminds me that in His pursuit of me, God took his love to another level and gave himself up to die in my place. A self sacrificial, enemy loving death on a cross.
Advent reminds me that no matter how many times I mess up, God isn’t going anywhere. He won’t leave me, or abandon me. He won’t build up a wall to protect himself from me and He won’t hesitate to embrace me. But again, why?
Was Jesus afraid to die? You bet. He pleaded with the Father to take that cup from him. He was after all fully God; fully human.
Was he afraid to love me? Did he think, “What if they don’t follow me after this? What if they mess up? What if they don’t live up to my expectation after hurting me, again?” Not for a second. Nouwen wrote “Your (God’s) heart is not a heart of stone.” The divine heart of God is so big and so full of love and compassion for everyone that he had to pursue us. He had to forgive us repeatedly. He had to come to earth and he had to take our place on the cross so that He could be with us forever. Because of His perfect love for us.
“God’s love is perfect and He wasn’t afraid to pursue us knowing that we would hurt Him again.”
One reason we don’t love people this way is simply that we’re afraid to. We’re afraid of what happens when we love others. We become vulnerable to rejection, hurt, heart ache, abuse, being taken advantage of, abandonment. Or maybe we’re afraid because it opens up truths about ourselves that we don’t otherwise want to admit. Maybe we’re afraid of the process. It takes work to love others, especially others that have hurt you. Love is messy and it can be a lonely road to pursue others in love when people around you say they don’t deserve it.
So we let our fear get the best of us and we give up on love. I’m so glad that God didn’t give up on love. Nouwen writes:
“The Father’s love was so unlimited that he wanted us to know that love and to find it in the fulfillment of our deepest desires…(His) heart does not distinguish between rich and poor, friend and enemy, female and male, slave and free, sinner and saint. Your heart is open to receive anyone with total, unrestricted love.”
God’s love is perfect. 1 John 4 v 18 says “There is no fear in love, but perfect love has cast out fear.” Because perfect love casts out fear. God’s love is perfect and He wasn’t afraid to pursue us knowing that we would hurt Him again. It's this perfect love that drives God to relentlessly, to recklessly pursue us.
In the words of Cory Asbury “When I was your foe, still you love fought for me...Oh the overwhelming never ending, reckless love of God. Oh it chases me down. Fights till I’m found. Leaves the 99. I couldn’t earn it and I don’t deserve it, still you give yourself away. Oh the overwhelming, neverending reckless love of God.”
And when you step back and think about it, if God didn’t truly, deeply, perfectly love us He wouldn’t have come at all.
But He did. And the story doesn’t end in a manger in Bethlehem. It reached a crescendo at Golgatha and will reach its apex when He returns.