Love

It has been a mere 5 days since Baby Loquacious entered our lives, but already I've learned so much about my Father through her.

God is love.  Jesus loves us.  That is what the Bible teaches, and what we learn to sing about from any early age.  However, to know that in our heads and to understand it in our hearts are two totally different things, and so often we define love as a feeling, a noun.  Sometimes we are challenged to love others, and it becomes a verb and an action that we can take.

I am learning about love as a state of being - God's being.  Because He is love, it is encompassed in all that He does.  God is our Father, and as Hubbs & I enter into our sixth day as parents, we are beginning to better understand what loving like a parent looks like:

• You never want to see your child cry or be in pain.  
• You never want to watch as others hurt your baby, even if it is just to give her a needle that is good for her.
• You always want to watch over your little one, even when she's perfectly fine and sleeping contentedly.  You simply want to be near her and keep her safe.
• You would move heaven and earth to ensure that your baby is well fed and happy, just as you'd very willingly give up yourself to make her life better.

And isn't that what God the Father did for us - even at the cost of His own Son Jesus?  He saw our sin, our tears, our eternal separation from Him and it pained His heart.  He knew the cost of sin and saw beyond time and space at the pain that we would endure because of our sin.  He watches over us and guards us jealously like a mother hen over her chicks, drawing near to us in pursuit of us, that we might draw near to Him. And He did very literally give Himself up for us, through Jesus the Son, so that we might have a better life, and life to the full.

As I look at my beautiful little girl, I get a glimpse of what my Father must feel for me and what I know He felt for Jesus.  And I am moved beyond tears to a place of great humility and awe.

What wonderous love is this! And what amazing love I am now experiencing for the first time through Baby Loquacious! For me, having our little she is a beautiful lesson in God's love, and I feel so very blessed to be able to have this love poured out on me just as I plan to pour it out in my own feeble, limited human way, on my baby.

A really tired set of parents and Baby Loquacious.