God is Love - Dennis McLeod

​

God is Love 

Love, what an ever-embracing word, and something every human being looks for at some stage in their lives. This I know from someone who was abandoned as a baby after my birth at the hospital, and only taken home by my mother after the hospital staff forced her to collect me. Fostered out at a very young age to a woman who treated me as an object, not a person. 

If I misbehaved, and I must have done this often, she placed me in the wardrobe and sometimes shut the door. The only time I saw my mother in the two to three years I was there was the day she came to collect me after her boss told her to bring me and my brother, who was in the Salvation Army Nest, a children’s home, back to where she was working, which was on a farm. 

The boss was OK and never mistreated us, but from a very early age, we became the unhired help. Life continued, and I never thought about love because I never saw or felt any. My father had disappeared during the war, so never, even though many years later, my mother married the boss, in all my life, I have never had a person I could call DAD. 

Being the only kids in school who came from a broken home, in fact, in our father’s army records, he denied we were even his children and are listed officially as illegitimate, as our parents never married, I was bullied. Life continued, then when I was around eight years old, the boss saved my life when he tipped me upside down and belted me on my back, dislodging a piece of candy that I was choking on. 

My mother gave me a quick hug, then sent me off to do my work. I was given no time to recover from the ordeal. In fact, that was the only hug I ever received from my mother throughout my childhood. Does this sort of situation affect a person? Of course it does, and they grab hold of any love they find. 

Anybody who shows you any sort of affection, you jump at the chance to embrace that affection. You may recover from the past, but the real healing comes only when you find the Lord or is that when the Lord taps you on the shoulder, and says, I died for your pain and healing, follow Me! 

 

This introduces you to a love you never thought possible to experience. We may have bruises and hurts, and living unimaginable memories that are pulling us down. But none of this matters when we see the agony our Lord endured to set us free from the things of this world to ready us for the world to come. [John 3:17]

We probably all know, God so loved the world, [John 3:16] we may have read, God is love, [1 John 4:8], and there is no darkness in Him. [1 John 1:5] With our lives surrendered to Him, we can experience what is written here, we can enjoy a future we never thought possible. Before, when we looked in the mirror, we saw nothing but misery.

Now we look through the eyes of Jesus and see ourselves as the Father sees us, spotless, clean, not like filthy rags, but washed clean by the Blood of the Lamb. [Revelation 7:14] Our face can shine like the face of Moses [Exodus 34:29-35] when we look into the eyes of Jesus. The Sun luminates the world around us, as our eyes have been renewed like a blind man receiving his eyesight after years of cold darkness.

We can become like little children exploring the wide open spaces for the first time, [Mark 10:15] faces glowing, and eyes shining like candles in the dark. This is the love that gives a reason to live after all the tears, tears that tried to destroy our futures. [John 10:10] Now, with God’s love written not just on our hearts but within them, [Psalm 119:11] we can really experience being born again. Born not into a sinful world, but a world with so much promise, so much love.

A love that swamps the past and opens the door to the one who sold everything to purchase the Pearl of Great Price. [Matthew 13:45-46] So that every broken heart is healed, and every wound is bound [Psalm 147:3] with His healing balm. [Jeremiah 8:22] All because of the greatest attribute of God, which is love, [1 Corinthians 13:13] something He proved to all, on that day so long ago when He hung on the Cross becoming sin in our place. [2 Corinthians 5:21]

All He did was to give us a future, not just here and now, but with a love that will carry us not just into an earthly future, but also throughout all eternity. Why, because we are made in His image, and He cannot deny Himself, [2 Timothy 2:13] His promises are true to hold up His holy name now and forevermore. [Ezekiel 36:22