A universe of hugs

“I love you so much, it’s like how much you love me, times a zillion.” My four-year-old son is generous with hugs, kisses and his declarations of affection. Recently he has taken to trying to quantify the depth of his love for his dad and I, and most of our “I love you’s” are met by his attempt to explain how HUGE his love is. “I love you 1 trillion, 5 million, seven-zero-ty-one.” “I love you bigger than anyone in the whole world!” or one of my favorites: “I love you as much as if the whole universe were hugs,” And yet I am quite sure that I love him more.

It is very likely that in ten years or so, there will come a season when my beloved son will not make these heart-warming pronouncements. Oh, that I could bottle them and save them up for his teen years! At some point, he will be probably be embarrassed to be seen in public with his mom and dad. He will slam his bedroom door and wonder why he got saddled with such ridiculous parents. I’m sure it will sting, but I will love him anyway, pray for him and remember fondly what it was like when the whole universe was full of hugs just for me.

Our Heavenly Father knows exactly how that feels.

I was raised in church, and as a little girl I would memorize Bible verses and preach deep theological sermons to the cows that grazed in the pastures behind my rural home (I’m sure I have many bovine converts to my credit and I can only imagine how those many changed cow-lives impacted the cattle in neighboring pastures). As I grew up, the seductions of the world choked out my childhood faith. By the time I was in high school, I didn’t want to be seen in public with God anymore. As a freshman in college, I very intentionally turned my back on Him and slammed the door behind me.

Oh, how that must have grieved God!

But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Romans 5:8

I am so humbled by God’s love for me. By His patience with me. By His persistence in seeking after me after all I did to distance myself from Him. He doesn’t wait for us to clean ourselves up. He doesn’t wait for us to pick ourselves up by the bootstraps and pull ourselves together. While we were still sinners…we are to come as we are. Leave the cleaning up to God.

We cannot ever fully grasp the extent of God’s love for us, but to lay hold of even a corner of the depth and breadth of his affections, I think we must first recognize and acknowledge the immensity and power of God Himself.

We sometimes – even unintentionally - prefer to make God into something of our own creation rather than acknowledge that the opposite is true. We cast him comfortably into the role of a grey-haired elderly sort who used his create-o-matic to churn out lambs and bunny rabbits at the dawn of time and now resides on a cloud where he answers the occasional prayer and enjoys an endless chorus of harp music. To acknowledge the affections of this version of God is, well, expected. Of course he loves us. He’s just like the divine version of everybody’s favorite grandpa.

But that’s not really God.

To even begin comprehend God is to first recognize that he is incomprehensible and that His power and sovereignty is so far beyond anything we could possibly hope to understand, any attempt to turn him into something we can “wrap our brains around” is to actually deny the essence of who He is. He is all-knowing, all-powerful, almighty and absolutely holy.  The prophet Isaiah describes his encounter with the Lord:

…I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one called to another and said:

“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts;
the whole earth is full of his glory!”      Isaiah 6:1-3

The heavenly beings who exist in His presence are in a perpetual state of worship because the Lord is so Holy! When Isaiah witnesses this he says:

...“Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!” Isaiah 6:5

When confronted with the majesty and holiness of God, our sin and the wretchedness of our humanity is exposed. If contemplation upon our Heavenly Father does not leave us completely in awe and laid bare, I have to wonder if we are really contemplating God at all.

And yet THIS is the God who loves us. The God who created all that we see and hear and engineered our capacity to do so, the God who placed the stars in the sky and designed our solar system to sustain life, THIS God knows the number of hairs on our heads and loves us. He wants not only a relationship with us, but to identify us as his children. And he was willing to send his son to die for us in order to make that possible.

What love He has for us!

Even an entire universe of hugs cannot match it.