God Gives Us

Today is National Encouragement Day! So, of course I had to share something that hopefully you find as encouraging as I did today 🙂

I personally find little kids to be a great source of honesty, joy, and a reminder about both the deep and simple parts of life. I was babysitting a little girl this morning, and we were making a craft project taken from a previous Sunday school class. It was a musical shaker that had paired along with a lesson about giving thanks and worshiping God.

After the little girl had a satisfied smile on her face, putting the cap back on her marker after decorating the paper plate Tamborine with crowns and hearts, she studied mine for a moment.

“What does this say?” She asked, pointing to my example.

“It says ‘God gives us’.” I replied. “Then I wrote things that God gives us, like love, joy, and hope.”

“I want mine to have those words too. Can you help me spell them?”

I smiled. “Sure.” Soon, she had found a new marker and spelled out “God gives us”. After that, she decided she didn’t want to do the words the same way I had.

Turning to me for a moment, tilting her head, she asked, “Could you tell me how to spell ‘hope when love is gone’?”

My eyes widened in surprise, since this seemed like an odd statement for a five-year-old to want to write on her craft project. But the more I’ve been thinking about it, the more I’ve realized how profound those words truly are.

We’ve all had a time where we’ve felt betrayed, unloved, or unappreciated. That’s because human love isn’t perfect. Sometimes, there are cases where it is so close that it feels perfect, but it never can be because people aren’t perfect. God’s love is the only love that can truly satisfy us.

Of course, God wants us to love others and to be loved. But He wants us to come to Him for our ultimate fulfillment and renewal of perfect love before we try extending it and receiving it from others. And when we feel heartbroken, we can still have hope because there is still someone out there that truly, sacrificially, undeniably loves us. The One who knew that the world would be made better with us on it. The One who died for us. The One who is always with us and the only One we can rely on.

Jesus.

I sure hope that you aren’t feeling brokenhearted today. I hope that you are feeling loved and cared for by others. But wherever your heart is today, I want you to still have hope. God loves you so much. No matter what’s going on in the world, between the division, the fires, the virus, and the longstanding issues we’ve been facing, God is still good. God still has a purpose for you. You don’t have to fear, because God is with you.

God loves you so much. ❤

“Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.”

1 John 4:7-8