The following is a short devotional thought I read in front of my church on November 24th, during our special “Live Thanks” service.
There aren’t a lot of things that truly endure, especially in our current world where we love all things disposable. It’s not just products that are easily disposable, it’s also relationships. Its time spent on useless endeavors. It’s money on frivolous comforts. But even the things we truly want to last forever, don’t last forever on earth. Our loved ones pass away. Friends move away. And eventually, all our money, the 80-hour workweeks we put in—none of that stops us from death. While all this sounds like a modern version of Ecclesiastes, I said all that to put the next statement in perspective.
Psalm 107:1 says, “O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; for his steadfast love endures forever.”
One thing endures forever. God’s love. There’s this word used here, my version says “steadfast love.” Others might say “lovingkindness” or “covenantal love.” As most of us know, English is rather uncreative when it comes to the word “love.” We use one word to refer to our affection toward ice cream and our affection toward our spouse. But in Hebrew, they had a special word for God’s love, hesed. It’s a complicated word, but it essentially means exactly what Psalm 107 defines it as: hesed is love that endures forever. It’s no going anywhere! It’s forever love.
There are so many reasons to be thankful for this: God’s forever love is extended to everyone on the planet. From the beginning, God loved all creation. In Acts 14, Paul and Barnabus tell the Greeks that every time rain fell on their crops and gave them a good season, that was God showing love. Then with Israel, God designed a special community to be the light to the nations. But God still loved all nations. Then with Jesus, a whole lot changed. God didn’t first start loving people when Jesus Christ came to earth, but there is no purer demonstration of forever love than Jesus Christ. As the Christ Hymn in Philippians 2 seems to describe, God became a lowly person to say: “There is nothing that I won’t do to bless you, to cherish you, to help you, to love you forever.”
God’s love is forever and for everyone. With Jesus, so many old barriers between God are taken down. In Acts 8, an Ethiopian eunuch, a foreigner with a deformity, is invited to experience God’s love more intimately than he could before Jesus. Your appearance or biology doesn’t stop you from God’s love. Then in Acts 9, Paul—a murder, a persecutor of followers of Jesus, is invited to experiences God’s love more intimately. What you’ve done doesn’t stop you from God’s love. In Acts 10, Peter fellowships and baptizes the household of a Roman commander, a person who represents a government oppressive of Jewish people. Your history, your beliefs, your career doesn’t stop you from God’s love.
We worship a God with big open arms. A God that loves everyone. And I’m thankful for that. But I’m even more thankful for a God that sent Jesus. Because in Jesus this forever love is closer than before. In Jesus, we are invited to experience the tangible and intangible benefits of heavenly love. We worship a God who gave us a Son, sacrificed for our sake, and a Spirit to dwell in us—if we have the Holy Spirit in us we have a part of God in us, a deep, intimate connection with divinity.
There aren’t a lot of things that truly endure. But God’s love does. God’s love endures, and more so transforms our souls if we let God in to transform our souls. Now and forever more, I’m thankful that God’s love is forever and for everyone.
