Accepted, Flaws and All -- Hope Chronicles 76

Yes, it is Tuesday and that means it's book day at Lelia's. First, though, I must apologize for wigging out on it last week. Honestly, I read it but didn't have time to do much more than come home, feed the cats, go to my second job, sleep, and do it all over again the next day. That's my excuse, but I've got time tonight.

Flaws. I've got them. I'm heavier than I would like to be. I struggle with depression. I can be snappish and mean at times. I get caught up in everything going on with me. You get the picture. There are a few things that might make me seem a bit unloveable and definitely unacceptable.

Lisa writes, "The depth of God's love for us is hard to comprehend. So are the height, the width, and the breadth of His love. our human minds will not allow us to process the greatness of the love of our Father because we are programmed by the world's view of love, which has great limitations." Limitations. Isn't that the truth? The world says, "I'll love you if . . . ." God says, "I'll love you in spite of . . . . I'll love you when you shine and I'll love you when you're down. I'll love you all the way around the world, to the moon and back again. I cannot love you less."

The truly amazing thing about God's love is that He does love in spite of. He knows all of my flaws and failures. J. I. Packer writes in Knowing God:

. . . There is tremendous relief in knowing that His love to me is utterly realistic, based at every point on a prior knowledge of the worst about me, so that no discovery now can disillusion him about me, in the way I am so often disillusioned about myself, and quench His determination to bless me.

God's love is utterly realistic. Because of that, I can find great comfort. God loves me in spite of knowing the worst about me.

But He also is always inviting me to grow.

The hard part, I think, is that in knowing this fact, God also expects me to try to love others in the same way. This is a growth point for me. Can I love you if you snub me? Can I love you when you hurt my feelings? Can I love you when you let me down?

Asking those questions are convicting. It makes me think of a couple of people at church I've kind of written off because I felt like the friendship was more important to me than to them. And they let me down one to many times. But maybe God is calling me to go back and love them, accept them, flaws and all.

And it that, I may pass on hope.