This is the end of my sabbatical series, but in many ways, it is the beginning. When we understand the truth of being God’s beloved, it becomes the foundation of who we are; the beginning of all that we do. The God of the universe, the one who brought all things into existence, a being infinitely beyond our understanding - he calls us his own.

I will admit - it is hard for our broken, hurt, abandoned selves to grasp this. In this world, we often trade accomplishment for recognition, production for love and effectiveness for prestige. All while the deepest longing of our hearts goes unsatisfied.

Yet, God is ready and willing - in fact he longs - to satisfy our need for love and belonging. And here is something interesting - it isn’t really about us or our longing at all. It is about him; the fact that God delights in us. It all stems from who he is and what he is like.

God’s big-picture plan is to create an eternal community of love - love between himself and his creation and between his creatures and the rest of creation; an eternal, continual, community of love.

So he created humankind with special love receptors. We were designed from the very beginning to be loved. Every human failing comes back to a lack or corruption of love. And that is what God is working on redeeming! He wants to unclog our love receptors that we have tried to fill with all kinds of worthless things and instead fill us with his love.

God knows that the only way that we will live lives of purpose, integrity and love is by first being filled with his love. This transforms us into people who reflect himself, people of love heading for an eternal, community of love.

But it all starts by believing an unbelievable truth - that God loves you. Put another way, the ultimate King of the Universe, whose very essence is love, looks at you and is filled with delight. God, who is holy and completely untainted by evil, takes joy in you. God, who sustains the universe and life itself, wants to spend time with you personally.

Much about who we believe God is and who we believe we are is built on our understanding of this truth: God loves me, personally.

And that is what God spent much of my sabbatical time reminding me of. He did this in many and various ways, but he was persistent and consistent.

Today, my hope is that you will be reminded of his outrageous love for you and encouraged in your devotion to him.

It is his love that undoes worthlessness, despair, or our feelings of being unqualified.  It is his joy in us that prompted him to rescue us from our entrapment in sin. It is his delight in us that draws us into intimacy with him.

Though there were many ways God reminded me of his love I will share are a few of them:

I love this poem I was given at the silent retreat I attended.

“Known” by Rev. Charles K. Robinson

I know you.
I created you.
I am creating you.
I have loved you from your mother’s womb.
You have fled, as you know, from my love.
But I love you nevertheless and not-the-less.
However far you flee, it is I who sustain your very power of fleeing.
And I will never finally let you go.

I accept you as you are. You are forgiven.
I know all your sufferings. I have always known them.
Please know that when you suffer, I am suffering.

You are beautiful.
You are beautiful more deeply within that you can see.
You are beautiful because of yourself, the unique way that only you are.
You reflect already something of the beauty of my holiness in a way that shall never end.
You are beautiful also because I, and I alone, see the beauty you shall become.
Through the transforming power of my love, you shall become perfectly beautiful.
You shall become perfectly beautiful in a uniquely irreplaceable way.

Which neither you nor I will work out alone,
For we shall work it out together.


There are so many things in this poem that are powerful to me.

• This idea that I am both fully known and fully loved, the idea that God sustains everything and specifically, he sustains me, even in my running from him. 

• The fact that I am accepted now, today, as I am. 

• The idea that he sees me as beautiful and that I, individually, am valuable to him.

 

• And that he gives me the dignity of being in partnership with him. This is all incredible!

One of the reflection questions I was asked is:

In what ways do I tend to control my life and treat it as my possession rather than embrace it freely as God’s gift to me?

I responded:
I think that it is my responsibility to steer my life toward God, my job to pursue God and that my relationship with God depends on me. While I certainly have a role to play, it is better to view my relationship with God as me responding to God’s pursuit of me.

A speaker I heard remarked, “God is love loving. God loves me personally, completely and unconditionally. God is rooting for us, not testing us.”

A reflection of mine at the end of the silent retreat:
God reminded me that he delights in me, loves to spend time with me, that he loves me personally, and that his greatest expectation of me is to receive his love.

Upon my return to church after vacation but before my sabbatical time was over, a visitor gave me a note.

It read, “Pastor Aimee, I believe God gave me a message for you… If God were a human, he would have tears of joy streaming down his face every time he looks at you. He loves you so much! 1 John 4:16”

Perhaps my most intimate experience with God:

Jesus, I give you all of me. I want to live loved by you.

• God gives me a picture. I am standing before Jesus, telling him that he can have all of me. I fill with light from the inside out. Then Jesus swoops in and grabs me with a big smile on his face and starts dancing with me this wild, joyful dance. I object, pointing out that there is so much about me that isn’t right yet. He just goes on dancing. He looks at me and says, “You are beautiful now. You will become beautiful too, but it is your love for me that I am drawn to.” 
• And so I dance. I decide that my best life is not one lived following Jesus, or being transformed by Jesus, but rather, my best life would be one lived simply being loved by Jesus. 

This particular image was one of the most powerful things I experienced. God, through this picture, reminded me that it isn’t what I do, or how complete or perfect I am that makes him love me. Even though I am a “work in progress,” God delights in me now.

God worked hard to remind me, to convince me that he loves me, that I am worthy, that he delights in me and takes joy in my company. I pray that as you have journeyed with me through these reflections that you too are reminded of his deep and personal love for you.

As we end our time together, in this particular venue, I would like to leave you with this thought from Henri Nouwen:

“Every time you listen with great attentiveness to the voice that calls you beloved, you will discover within yourself a desire to hear that voice longer and more deeply. It is like a well in the desert. Once you have touched wet ground, you want to dig deeper.”
- Henri Nouwen Life of the Beloved

Let’s be a people that listen attentively and dig deeper.