How Can I Even Come Close?

     Preachers struggle (At least I do.  I'm sure others do, too.)  with adequately proclaiming the Message.  My prayer every Sunday is an apology to God that I wasn't able to fully describe what He wanted to be proclaimed.  God is faithful and He can take the weak words of someone and make them into something relevant.  That's what I count on every time I speak.
     Last Sunday's sermon was extremely difficult for me to satisfactorily communicate--it was about God's love.  But I take heart in the fact that even the Scriptures struggle sometimes to describe His love.  Superlatives are almost always used.  "For God so loved the world..."  "See how great a love he has lavished upon us..."  "God has poured out his love into our hearts..."  The Old Testament, especially the Psalms, talk of God's unfailing love.  I was amused the other day when I read something in the Psalms where the psalmist was questioning God.  He said something like, "Has your unfailing love ceased?"  If it's unfailing, how could it cease?
     But why does God love me?  ME?  That's what I have a hard time wrapping my arms around.  In the Broadway production of Fiddler on the Roof, Tevye says something to the affect, "Why do we do the things we do?  I'll tell you.  I don't know.  But it's tradition!"  Why does God love me the way He does?  I'll tell you.  I don't know.  But He does!  He demonstrates it by giving His own Son.  Paul tells us in Romans that nothing, nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.  Our problem is we oftentimes refuse to accept His love.  There's the rub.  He never quits.  We often do.  And there comes a time when even He has had enough.  Don't believe me?  Read the stories of the Israelites and see what happened to them.  He'll do the same to us, too.
     O, how He loves you!  Please.  Please.  Let's not let Him down.

And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge--that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.  Ephesians 3:17-19