On Wednesday Jack and I had breakfast at a grocery store, sitting by a wall of windows in the eating area. Just outside the window were two young women also having breakfast, and the one facing me held in her arms a very young infant while she fed him with a bottle. The tenderness and sweetness on her face as she held him and virtually forgot her own food, caught my attention. The baby was hungry and finished the bottle before he fell asleep in her arms. I thought I was witnessing one of he greatest engines in the survival of humanity on planet Earth.

When God Himself wished to express the depth of His love for His people in the Old Testament He found no more potent comparison than the love of a mother for her baby: “Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though even she may forget, I will not forget you!” (Isaiah 49:15) Even earlier God in Moses expresses His love: “The eternal God is your refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms.” (Deuteronomy 33:27)

From the earliest times God has repeated the connection between His love and eternal life. When He established His covenant with Abraham, He said, “Look up at the sky and count the stars if indeed you can count them.. . . so shall your offspring be.” (Genesis15:5) Later the prophet Jeremiah reports from God, “I have loved you with an everlasting love.” (Jeremiah 31:3)

The love I saw on the young mother’s face at breakfast was a reflection of the ancient and eternal love of God for all His children. Some times that love is almost captured in paintings of Mary holding her infant Jesus; and it’s no accident that this love is the love that God taps to help us understand His Character and even His motives in relating to us.

Mary’s love for her infant coincided with her love for God, as Mark Lowry’s lyrics attest: “Mary did you know that when you kissed your little baby, you kissed the face of God?”

We can’t measure the love of God, as we can’t measure God Himself, but He is generous in displaying for us images of His love and of His Person in the very world we inhabit, the world that hardly acknowledges Him, but cannot help but display His creation in every setting. Most of all ,God gives us His Book to read all the many manifestations of His Spirit on earth, and to find Him in its pages.

Love in Him,

Prue