LoveReign
a Love Affair with a SoveReign God
February 8th, 2023
All Things
I John 3:1-2, ‘Consider the kind of extravagant love the Father has lavished on us—He calls us children of God! It’s true; we are His beloved children. And in the same way the world didn’t recognize Him, the world does not recognize us either. My loved ones, we have been adopted into God’s family; and we are officially His children now. The full picture of our destiny is not yet clear, but we know this much: when Jesus appears, we will be like Him because we will see Him just as He is.’
He already knew he was going to be late even before this. He hated being late! It went against everything engrained in him. All his childhood, he was always the kid who arrived last. He had more tardies than he had friends, and his senior year, he was voted ‘Most Likely to be Late’. His parents were late to everything they ever attended. In fact, when he was born, his dad arrived late to the hospital and missed his entire birth, which his mother never failed to remind him. And when his little sister was born, his mom was even late, so his sister was birthed in the back seat of the car on the side of the road. He missed numerous opportunities over the years when he wasn’t able to control anything, being dependent upon his parent’s foregone lateness, so he vowed, someday when he was in charge, he would assure he’d never be late again. It had worked out pretty good. One girl he dated early on in college was, she bragged, ‘fashionably late’ to everything, and immediately, it was apparent to him, they would not be a good match. His wife, the woman God intended for him, was as fussy as he was about being on time, so they made a perfect pair. And the children they were raising were even more disciplined about timeliness. If you weren’t fifteen minutes early, you were late!
But today! He fidgeted in his seat, tapped his foot against the solid flooring, thrummed his fingers on the conference table; his eyes roving constantly to the ticking clock on the wall. Didn’t they know he had somewhere important to be?! Of course not, he reckoned with himself. It was only his daughter who was being proposed to tonight; it wasn’t everyone else’s daughters. And because their family was an intricate mass of woven threads, unlike so many other families, he and her mom were included in the top-secret mission which lay ahead. At one point, he nearly stood to his feet to politely excuse himself, but merely shifted in the hard seat beneath him. Surely, this would wrap up soon. The wall clock ticked loudly past the hour and the boardroom (bored room) speaker continued to drone on. Tap-tap-tap, his toe on the floor. One of his co-workers cleared his throat, stood quietly to his feet and signaled his watch, mumbling an apology, and ducked out of the house in a beeline for the exit. He almost rose to his feet, following suit, but something grounded him in place. It was weird; it was almost like he was immobile, glued to the seat and couldn’t stand if he wanted to. Which he did.
~ We have all been there. That surprise announcement, an unexpected phone call, the unsuspecting person, a startling revelation, a tragic accident, the unforeseen, that sudden dread in the pit of our stomach, those words we never wanted to hear, the unknowing and the unraveling. What happens with the disappointments in the hands of an all-knowing, sovereign God? What is on the other side of the tarnished coin?
Now this. As the flow of traffic slowed to a crawl, Siri warned there was an accident ahead. A large accident. It had to be huge. The delay kept growing longer and longer, the red line on navigation depicting the lengthy stop-and-go stretching further. He tapped his foot on the brake and thrummed his fingers on the steering wheel, cringing when the car phone lit up and his wife chided him for his tardiness. ‘Everyone is waiting for you, dear. What’s the holdup?’ she questioned just as the singular line of cars he was in passed by a tremendous mass of twisted wreckage. A tragic feeling swept through him. There, toward the middle of the carnage, was his co-worker’s SUV, mangled and destroyed, and the realization sank in like a concrete brick tied to a person being tossed into a body of water. God, that would have been him too in one of those vehicles! ‘What’s the holdup?’ his wife asked again. ‘It’s not like you to be late,’ she reminded him.
It took too long to find his voice, but when he did, he cleared his throat and swiped at a stream of tears trailing his face. ‘Life,’ he whispered, ‘happened.’
Romans 8:28, ‘That’s why we can be so sure that every detail in our lives of love for God is worked into something good.’ (MSG)
“When we feel like we are not good enough to be loved by God, we should remember that God’s love is greater than our doubts. We must silence the sounds of condemnation so we can hear the voice of God’s loving assurance and remember that He has selected us to be part of His family”. (The Voice, Bible Gateway)
