A very close ministerial colleague of mine told me of a time recently when he was with some friends on a leisure outing, and somehow they felt compelled to bring their newborn baby with them!  You would have thought the Queen of England was in their midst.  My friend related to me how the baby was never in want for someone to hold or to talk to her.  The baby was rocked, sung to and played with all evening.  She was held close and loved on; folks walked her around, introducing her to the world, and others protected her while she slept.  That certainly was one loved-on baby!

I remember the other night when I was channel surfing on the TV, when I ended up catching part of the show called "The Dog Whisperer."  Have you seen the show?  If you haven't you need to catch it someday.  You see this man, "the Dog Whisperer," works with dogs that people have given up on.  He sometimes goes to people's homes and works with their troublesome dogs, onsite.  People would talk about the issues they had with their dog's behaviros, but they would always talk about how much they loved their dog.  Invariably, they would make mention of how much their dogs loved them, unconditionally!

We all need that kind of love, don't we?  We all need that kind of unconditional lvoe that was showered on that little baby.  We need the kind of love that we receive from our dogs, and cats, who do love us, without any sort of conditions.  They love us, no matter what we earn or even how we look.  When we are loved in that way, we feel safe and we can grow and thrive and begin to live up to our God-given potential.

This all got me to thinking.  How do you and I show our love each and every day?  After we have moved past the honeymoon phase of marriage, do we just kind of assume that our husbands and wives know that we love them, and that we mean it?  How about our at-home kids, and our grown-up kids, and even the grandkids?  How do we tell them and show them that we really love them?

Well, let's consider the way in which Jesus shows us that God loves us.  We certainly need to count our blessings, of home, food, family and nation.  These are abundant blessings to be sure!  But if we didn't have those things, would we still know that God loves us?  You see Jesus showed us how much God loves us by stretching out his arms, further than our human bodies can stretch, as his hands were nailed to the cross.  Jesus shows us unconditional love because we have all had a very human moment or two, when we have not been the kind of people that both He and we wanted us to be,  In the midst of all our mistakes, our moments of ugliness, willfulness and sinfulness that distress God do not destroy God's amazing love for us.

Godloves us more than our pets.  God loves us like the folks loved on that baby.  God loves us even more!  God wants us to feel and experience that love and let it touch the deepest parts of our inner being.  God wants His unconditional amazing love to reach down and speak to that place where we are most broken, or most ashamed, or more fearful.  God wants us to feel that kind of love that invites us to look into the eyes of Jesus through faith, and see how deep God's love really is for us, His children, created in His very image!

So, in the days ahead, take some tome to think of God's amazing unconditional love for you.  Try to visualize Jesus looking deep into your eyes and knowing your deepest heart.  Feel yourself literally wrapped in the loving arms of God and begin again, to feel really loved!  Then, renewed by faith, share your love and God's unconditional love with those you meet along the journey of life and Christian Discipleship.

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