God's love

I had not realized that if God loves this world, God suffers; I had thoughtlessly supposed that God loved without suffering. I knew that divine love was the key. But I had not realized that the love that is the key is suffering love.  –NICHOLAS WOLTERSTORFF

                                                                                                 

We now come to a characteristic of God that everyone either believes or hopes He possesses. Faith in a God of love is, indeed, our greatest comfort. If true, it is the warmest reassurance to the human soul. If not, we are virtually without hope. Yet even among those who believe, God’s love is also the source of the deepest of questions. If God is love, why do we hurt? If He loves us forever, why doesn’t He act like it now? If He is the source of all love, why do we so often sense His elusiveness instead of His embrace?

The first item on my agenda today is to join a host of others in proclaiming my belief in a loving God. The New Testament epistle of First John asserts that “God is love.” The near-unanimous testimony of believers throughout history is the same. And the Argument from Human Characteristics provides objective confirmation. We know full well that human love must have a loving God as its Source, for the simple reason that any effect must arise from a cause consistent with it. Nature, so impersonal and devoid of love, cannot be that source. God is love’s fountainhead, the well from which all love comes. And His love, just like His power and knowledge, must be boundless, exceeding the cumulative love of humans since the beginning of time. Nowhere is this better expressed than in this stanza of an old gospel song:

Could we with ink the ocean fill

And were the skies of parchment made,

Were every stalk on earth a quill

And every man a scribe by trade –

To write the love of God above

Would drain the oceans dry,

Nor could the scroll contain the whole,

Though stretched from side to side.

My second agenda item is to interject a dimension of God’s love that is often overlooked and underappreciated: the suffering side of His love. If you think about it a while, you will come to realize that love and suffering are mutually inclusive. You can’t have one without the other. To love is to suffer; to suffer is to love. “Death, psychological distress, pain, and injustice,” says Bruce Vaughn, “provide the occasion for suffering, but not the cause. For none of these would cause us suffering were it not for the fact that we love. If we did not love, both ourselves and others, we would not suffer.” He goes on to quote Miguel de Unamuno: “Love and suffering mutually engender one another.”

If you have trouble grasping this concept, then consider the love of a mother toward her child. Even before the baby’s birth, maternal love springs forth within her. On the one hand, this love imparts to her a sense of great satisfaction. On the other hand, it demands of her a life of gritty sacrifice. It is a yearning love that longs and strives for the child’s good. When that good does not materialize (for instance, when the child becomes ill or rebellious), the mother suffers pain and hurt. To avoid that suffering would be to abandon love itself.

God’s love, the wellspring of that mother’s love, is just the same but to an even greater extent. He loves us infinitely, so He must infinitely desire what is best for us. And when, because of sin and suffering, that best does not materialize, He must infinitely experience the painful, suffering side of love that hurts along with the beloved.

The prophet Hosea, likewise using the analogy of parental affection, expresses how God suffers in love:

When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son. The more I called Israel, the more they went from me... Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk, I took them up in my arms; but they did not know that I healed them. I led them with cords of compassion, with the bands of love, and I became to them as one who eases the yoke on their jaws, and I bent down to them and fed them… My people are bent on turning away from me... How can I give you up, Ephraim! How can I hand you over, Israel!... My heart recoils within me; my compassion grows warm and tender.

Here we see the classic Old Testament portrait of a God of love grieved by our sin. He suffers with us. In the New Testament, we find a picture even more poignant. There God in Jesus Christ groans under the weight of our sin. He suffers for us.

Let me bookend today’s reading with another quote from Yale professor Nicholas Wolterstorff. His son’s tragic death at the age of twenty-five led him to write a book entitled Lament for a Son. Referring to the aftermath of this horrible experience, he writes:   

My son is gone. The ache of loss sinks down and down, deep beyond telling. How deep do souls go? ...I never knew sorrow could be like this... It’s hard to keep one's footing... I cannot fit these pieces together. I am at a loss. My wound is an unanswered question...

Who is this God looming over me? Majesty? I see no majesty. Grace? Can this be grace? I see nothing at all; dark clouds hide the face of God. Slowly the clouds lift. What I saw then was tears, a weeping God, suffering over my suffering...

I do not know what to make of this; it is to me a mystery. But I find I can live with that... Life eternal doesn’t depend on getting all the questions answered; God is often as much behind the questions as behind the answers...

[T]he cry of those who suffer injustice is the cry of God... And sometimes when the cry is intense, there emerges a radiance which seldom appears: a glow of courage, of love, of insight, of selflessness, of faith. In that radiance we see best what humanity was meant to be. So I shall struggle to live the reality of Christ’s rising and death’s dying. In my living, my son’s dying will not be the last word.

Please do not mistake me. I am not presenting to you today a teary-eyed, overly sentimental God who would cry at the cinema nor a divine worry-wart akin to some doting grandparent. Nor am I trying to humanize God, giving you the picture of a weaker, less powerful Being whose hands are tied to the point that all He can do is weep. Such a portrait is the furthest thing from my mind. An emotionless, non-suffering God would be preferable. Here again, my objective is to raise your view of God. You and I are loving beings. We may not always experience or practice it, but we know what it means to truly love. We know that therein is abundant privilege and joy admixed with the deepest sacrifice and suffering. We understand that true love longs for the best in the beloved and selflessly works toward that end. It rejoices when that end is achieved and grieves, in the fullest sense of the word, when it is not. We are aware that true love, in the words of the apostle Paul, “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” Or, as he sums it up, “Love never fails.” And if that is what we know about human love, then we know just as surely that its source—the infinite love of God—must be vastly greater in every dimension. The joy of God as He loves must be beyond measure; likewise, His sorrow.

That is the portrait of God I am painting on the canvas of your soul today—a God more powerful, knowledgeable, sovereign, righteous, and loving than you could ever imagine. To those of you today who do not believe in a God of such love, I offer to you my deepest sympathy and prayer. To those of you who do believe but for some reason do not sense His love, I declare to you the grandest consolation. Even now, you are in God’s embrace. How strong and secure are those arms! Yet how softly the suffering Father holds you!

To all of us, I offer a reminder that the final chapter in our existence has not been written. God is not yet through with us. He still in divine love is working to accomplish for us what is best. He is determined that His purpose for us will not be thwarted. He vows, in the midst of His own suffering, that our suffering will not be the last word.

                                                   -Dear God, You Sure Don't Act Like You're Alive (Day 42)