Love Like the Father

My greatest fear when I found out I was going to be a dad had nothing to do with diapers, baby food, or sleepless nights. My fear for my little boy was that he would be born without arms just like his dad. I was all too familiar with the struggles and pain that would come with being armless, and I simply did not want that for my boy.

When the time came for the first ultrasound, my eyes quickly began to look back and forth the very instant the scan appeared on the screen. It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the images of our baby. As they began to settle, I didn’t need to ask the ultrasound technician anything. Right in the middle of the screen was our son, sucking on his thumb! Our little boy had two arms and ten fingers.

That moment eased the fear of my own heart, but it changed nothing about how I was going to love my son. If he had two arms or no arms—I was going to love him with everything that I am, simply because he is my little boy. When I became a dad, it gave me just a small glimpse of how Jesus loves me.

Jesus loves all of us with the kind of love that goes far beyond the boundaries of how we love people in return. Romans 8 describes the love of God like this:

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

No circumstance, person, or power is going to rip us away from God’s love for us. Imagine how life-changing it would be for us to live into that promise daily? In our abiding, there is an element of personal holiness—keeping the commandments that He has set in front of us. It is abiding in His love that He changes us, and it is abiding in His love in keeping His commandments that we display that love in this broken world.

Embrace the fact that you are loved, and let that love change the world!