I realized this week as I reviewed some of my previous blogs that I hadn’t written much, if anything, on the main topic: God’s Love. I’ve focused quite a bit on “messy lives”, usually in reference to my own. I hope that doing so has made you think about, and maybe even feel better about yours! We all have our messes to clean up. Messes that are uniquely shaped and sized and packaged. Messes that seem to be made just for us. We hate them, but aren’t they wonderful? If for no other reason they make us learn to live in and with and for love. Not just any love, but God’s love.

We tend to think of this love as being expressed in specific ways. God TELLS us He loves us in the Bible; God SHOWS us He loves us by creating us and giving us His Son, “God so loved the world . . . “; God REMINDS us that He loves us by rescuing us out of some desperate situation or charging in like the cavalry of old, mounted on a white steed like Gandalf in “Lord of the Rings”. Lots of expressions of God’s love. “Behold what manner of love God has lavished upon us”!

Now consider how He hasn’t expressed His love. I don’t mean the occasions when you think God held out on you or left you hanging. Rather I mean the times when God expressed His love for you by NOT expressing it—at least not in an obvious way.
God has loved me by leaving me alone. Haven’t there been times in your life when you simply wanted to be left alone? I remember one young mom saying that all she wanted was time by herself to take a bath without one of her little cherubs barging in. Don’t we desire the same from God? Just a break? A few Sundays, or maybe even a month of Sundays off church without feeling guilty or obligated. Some time away from feeling like we need to be in the service in order to be in service to God or to others. Haven’t there been times when you just wanted to get out and get away, to leave home and breathe something other than the spirit of God? “Absence makes the heart grow fonder.” Maybe that cliché applies to God.

God has loved me by being silent. Early Sunday morning it snowed. I sensed it when I awoke, as there was no sound. None. Nothing was moving. Everything was still and silent. Kind of reminded me of “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” when the children go through the wardrobe and enter Narnia. I took a long walk. I didn’t go to church. It was as if the snow had covered creation with this huge blanket that muffled the madness. It was so calming. Yet in that silence God was speaking. Sweetly. Clearly. “This is for you”, He said. I heard Him. The message was magnificently unexpressed.

God has loved me by not insisting that I do something HIS way. Sometimes it’s easier to describe love by what it isn’t, rather than what it is. And one of those things that love isn’t is Control. God doesn’t control us. I don’t believe that God even demands obedience. He gives us freedom to live, and to love. He allows us to make mistakes, to wander away, to screw our lives up and the lives of others as well, while all the time assuring us that He is “there” for us. And He loves us. It’s illustrated, as I have mentioned before, in the story of the Prodigal Son. That’s Love!

God has loved me by listening, rather than speaking, or acting. I’ve begun watching the old HBO series entitled “Six Feet Under”. Have you seen it? It’s a classic! I love the dark humor. There’s one episode where a man is sitting at his kitchen table, incessantly blabbing about benign and boring things, while his wife is making breakfast in the background. Suddenly a cast iron skillet enters the picture, and he falls over dead. She’d had enough of his verbal diarrhea. Too much talking is annoying. For as great of an emphasis as there is on God SPEAKING in the Bible—and other venues—I think there is an equal amount of significance to be placed on God listening. If not, why would He place such importance on prayer? God listens. I love that about Him! And what’s more, I love it that He apparently not only hears our prayers, but actually listens to us! God listens to my complaints about my shit that ultimately doesn’t matter to anyone but me, if it matters at all. And that’s the thing—for some reason it matters to Him! Because I matter to Him. And you matter to Him. A lot!

God loves you. And He expresses that love sometimes best in unexpressed ways.