Day 6: Above all love
Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins (1 Peter 4:8).
Lord God our Father in heaven, we know that God is love (1 John 4:8). Yet, love is but one attribute of everything that makes up Your omnipotent greatness. You are faithful, trustworthy, wise and good. You are just, holy, pure and true.
We have no capacity of mind, no language to grasp all that You are. You reveal Yourself as a God who is the only, and yet the sum— a God who is each part, and yet the whole. We struggle with some of these paradoxes, but to focus on one attribute to the exclusion of another would be to create our own god— an idol of our making.
So often You are characterized only as a God of love. But You have said that You are also a God of justice, a God of judgment and justifiable wrath— concepts we fully understand and apply in the human realm. How much more so for a pure and holy God!
For only when we accept that true justice does not leave the guilty unpunished can we experience true gratitude for a God of amazing grace who is slow to anger, abounding in love and forgiving sin and rebellion (Numbers 14:18).
Only when we apprehend Your righteousness and Your judgment can we understand and embrace Your forgiveness and love, and exclaim like the apostle John, See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! (1 John 3:1).
You have set us the ultimate example of love. The Lord Jesus told us, My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends (John 15:12-13).
Our everyday reality may not ask us to literally lay down our lives for others, but often, we struggle mightily with the call to practical love— to love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins (1 Peter 4:8). We, who resist acknowledgment of our offenses against a holy and righteous God— we count, and measure, and track, and stack all offenses against ourselves. We fret and seethe, and scheme on how to exact payment, vengeance, and retribution.
O Father, help us today to lay down our pride, to lay down our rights, to lay down our defenses. Your own love has covered the multitude of our sins. Teach us to do likewise. Search us and know our unforgiving views, our exacting judgments, our inflexible stances, our "established" opinions. Teach us gentleness, grace, compassion, and empathy.
You have given us the command, Refrain from anger and turn from wrath; do not fret—it leads only to evil (Psalm 37:8). Help us to get rid of all bitterness, rage, and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Help us to be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ You forgave us (Ephesians 4:31-32).
Today, may we take every opportunity to love each other deeply.
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