by Christine Sine
Yesterday I asked the question What does God love about me? The responses were fascinating as most people have never asked themselves this or considered that God does love them. I found Pastor Coe’s response suggesting that we usually look for God’s approval rather than God’s love particularly insightful. I responded:
Yes I think there is a difference between God’s approval which is an acknowledgement of accomplishment and God’s love. With a new puppy in our home I am thinking a lot about this too. I love her, the feel of her warm fur, the way she snuggles into me when I pick her up, her silly antics but it certainly has nothing to do with approval – she still bites, and pees on the floor and gets into things she shouldn’t. My love for her has nothing to do with her bad behaviour at times.
I think God’s love is like that. It has nothing to do with our bad behaviour, with the times we get things wrong or deliberately disobey. There are innate characteristics God has given each of us that are God delights in because that is who and what God has created us to be. Just as I love my puppy because she is who and what God has created her to be – a puppy with all the sweetness that God has infused into her tiny golden retriever body, God loves each of us – because we are lovingly shaped with hands and feet and beautiful smiles. Some of us are fast, some slow. Some of us are tall some short. Some of us love spread sheets, some of us hate them. but we are all lovingly and uniquely shaped and enlivened with the breath of God.
I think that this is some of what Eric Liddel expresses in the 1980s film Chariots of Fire. He is an Olympic runner in the 1920s, whose fundamentalist Christian family is dismayed at his desire to run. At one point he says: God made me fast and when I run I sense God’s pleasure.
Maybe instead of asking What does God love about me, it would be easier to reflect on God made me ….. and when I …. I sense God’s pleasure. What is it about you as a unique creation of God that makes you sense God’s pleasure? Is it your athletic prowess, your love of gardening, your delight in mathematics, your artistic talent? Is it your patience with illness or your acceptance of infirmity? The list is endless.
Take a few minutes to reflect on this today and delight in the pleasure God takes in you.
2 comments
I love it, Christine, that your list included a faithful tolerance for infirmity (a fair paraphrase, i tink?). That would be one of mine, if not the whole banana! But i have not always carried this attitude. Before reconnecting with @jpusa in ’95, i’d been hip-deep in that muck and mire!
As recently as the early 90s, (my car accident – that broke both my legs – happened in in Aug ’80 – just a few mos. past my 21st b-day), i was in hot-pursuit of a gift of healing. By ’94 my very faith was shipwrecked on the shoals of the, so-called, faith movement. How ironic!
What a wonderful thought, that we bring God pleasure, through expressing ourselves as he designed us.