Divine Love

In his book, "Wisdom of Tenderness," Brennan Manning tells:

Several years ago, Edward Farrell of Detroit took his two-week vacation to Ireland to celebrate his favorite uncle's eightieth birthday. On the morning of the great day, Ed and his uncle got up before dawn, dressed in silence, and went for a walk along the shores of Lake Killarney. Just as the sun rose, his uncle turned and stared straight at the rising orb. Ed stood beside him for twenty minutes with not a single word exchanged. Then the elderly uncle began to skip along the shoreline, a radiant smile on his face.

After catching up with him, Ed commented, “Uncle Seamus, you look very happy. Do you want to tell my why?”

“Yes, lad,” the old man said, tears washing down his face. 'You see, the Father is fond of me. Ah, me father is so very fond of me.”

M. Robert Mulholland, Jr., writes in “Invitation to a Journey”:

I once heard a woman tell of her struggle with this reality. Her mother was a prostitute, and she was the accidental byproduct of her mother's occupation. Her life's pilgrimage had brought her to faith in Christ, blessed her with a deeply Christian husband and beautiful children, and given her a life of love and stability. But she was obsessed with the need to find out who her father was. This obsession was affecting her marriage, her family, and her life.

She told how one day she was standing at the kitchen sink, washing the dishes, with tears of anguish and frustration running down her face into the dishwater. In her agony, she cried out, "Oh, God, who is my father?" Then, she said, she heard a voice saying to her, "I am your father."

The voice was so real she turned to see who had come into the kitchen, but there was no one there. Again, the voice came, "I am your father, and I have always been your father."

In that moment she knew a profound scriptural reality. She came to know that deeper than the "accident" of her conception was the eternal purpose of a loving God, who had spoken her forth into being before the foundation of the world.

Harvie Conn was a missionary in Korea. And Harvie was trying to reach prostitutes for Christ. And in the Asian culture, prostitutes had a far lower status than prostitutes do in other societies. And Harvie couldn’t break through, because when he offered the love of Christ, they said, ‘sorry, Christ would never have anything to do with me. You don’t understand. I am an absolute…I’m scum.’ Finally, one day Harvie said, “Let me tell you the doctrine of predestination. Let me tell you the doctrine of election.”

‘Our God doesn’t love you because you’re good…doesn’t love you because you’re moral… doesn’t love you because you’re humbler…doesn’t love you because you’re surrendered. He actually just chooses people and sets His love on you and loves you just because He loves you. That’s how you’re saved.’

And the prostitute said, ‘What?!!

Harvie: ‘Yes!!”

She said, ‘You mean He just loves people like that?’

Harvie: ‘Yes.’ ‘Well, how do I know if He loves me?’

Then Harvie said, ‘When I tell you the story of Jesus dying for you, does that move you?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Do you want Him?’ ‘Yeah!’ ‘You aren’t capable of wanting Him IF He wasn’t wanting you! You aren’t capable of loving Him unless He was loving you.’ And Harvie found that prostitutes started coming to Christ because they got a radical new cultural identity

Editor’s Note: You can access the entire sermon here

Author Philip Yancey writes:

Where I live in the Rocky Mountains, you can see several thousand stars with the naked eye on a clear night. All of them belong to the Milky Way galaxy, which contains more than 100 billion stars, including an average-sized one that our planet Earth orbits around—the Sun.

Our galaxy has plenty of room: 26 trillion miles separate the Sun from the star nearest to it. And traveling at the speed of light, it would take you 25,000 years to reach the center of the Milky Way from our home planet, which lies out in the galaxy’s margins.

Until a century ago, astronomers believed the universe consisted of our galaxy alone. Then, in the 1920’s, Edwin Hubble proved that one apparent cloud of dust and gas in the night sky, named Andromeda, was actually a separate galaxy. Now there were two. When NASA launched a large telescope into space for a clearer view, they appropriately named it after Hubble.

In 1995, a scientist proposed pointing the Hubble Space Telescope at one dark spot, the size of a grain of sand, to see what lay beyond the darkness. For ten days, the telescope orbited Earth and took long-exposure images of that spot. The result, which has been called “the most important image ever taken,” would astonish everyone. It turns out that tiny spot alone contained almost 3,000 galaxies!

Scientists now believe that if you had unlimited vision, you could hold a sewing needle at arm’s length toward the night sky and see 10,000 galaxies in the eye of the needle. Move it an inch to the left and you’d find 10,000 more. Same to the right, or no matter where else you moved it. There are approximately a trillion galaxies out there, each encompassing an average of 100 to 200 billion stars.

Possible Preaching Angle:

How should we adapt to this humbling new reality? Back when people assumed the universe comprised a few thousand stars, a psalmist marveled in prayer, “When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them?” (Ps. 8:3–4).

The answer, of course, is found in the New Testament revelation that God loves the world so deeply (John 3:16) that he sent his Son in the form of a servant (Phil. 2:6-7) to die for humanity. In an act of humility beyond comprehension, the God of a trillion galaxies chose to “con-descend”—to descend to be with—the benighted humans on this one rebellious planet, out of billions in the universe.

Blogger Stephanie Duncan Smith describes the awe she felt watching a total solar eclipse:

[My husband] Zach and I hiked up to a ridge with our supernova glasses. I won’t forget the way the sun just … dimmed, snuffed out, the way the birds swooped in confusion thinking it was nightfall, the magic of witnessing this cosmic event together.

Though not everyone felt that way. I am paraphrasing from memory, but a high-profile CEO tweeted at the time that while everyone else might be staring at the sky through their cereal boxes that day, she would be in the office making millions.

Imagine being bored by the thought of beholding something bigger than yourself, something wild and other and alive. Imagine considering yourself “above” the cosmic orbit in which you make your creaturely home. This executive considered herself too busy to be bothered by the wonder of a world outside herself. She was opting for the security of the measurable, the predictable, all that can be calculated and forecast and scaled. Yet by doing so, she was opting out of the sheer gift of being wowed.

It is human nature to want to be wowed. Environmentalist Paul Hawken once said, “Ralph Waldo Emerson once asked what we would do if the stars only came out once every thousand years. No one would sleep that night, of course … We would be ecstatic, delirious, made rapturous by the glory of God. Instead, the stars come out every night and we watch television.”

Every night! There is a cosmic event. Every night, an invitation to participate in what psychologists refer to as the experience of “perceived vastness,” or awe. As Hawken highlights here, we tend to tune out the familiar.

Only a fifth of Americans have experienced “true comfort” in the past 24 hours, according to a new survey. The poll of 2,000 Americans reveals that true comfort—feeling completely relaxed or at ease—can be hard to come by, as just 21% say they’ve been able to reach this state.

The survey also finds that the average American only feels comfortable for a third of the day—roughly eight hours.

The survey reveals that more than anything else, taking a nap (47%) is the top way respondents find true comfort. This is followed by taking a walk outside (41%) and having a spa day (36%), rounding out the top three ways respondents prefer to find comfort in their day.

When temperatures drop, respondents say they also find true comfort in taking a hot bath (34%) and creating the perfect temperature at home (25%)—which is 72 degrees Fahrenheit.

Possible Preaching Angle:

The Christian does not look for unreliable temporary comfort in the things of this world but genuine and lasting comfort through our Father in heaven, who personally comforts us (2 Cor. 1:4), with eternal comfort (2 Thess. 2:16), through the Holy Spirit (Acts 9:31), through his promises (Ps. 119:50), and by means of his rod and his staff (Ps. 23:4)

For years, Ben Affleck wrestled with alcohol addiction. A consequence, he says, of having an alcoholic father. But the actor shared that he was in a much better place now and doesn't think he will ever return to that way of life.

It is no secret that substance abuse is a pervasive problem in Hollywood. Tragic stories are common. So, how did Affleck escape this fate?

In an interview he credited his Christian faith. Affleck says his Christian faith in later life has allowed him to accept his flaws and imperfections as a man. He said:

The concept that God, through Jesus, embraces and pardons all of us - from those we admire to those we might judge or resent - is powerful. If God can show such boundless love, urging us to love, avoid judgement and offer forgiveness, it serves as a profound model of how we should strive to be.

What I truly appreciate, even as I still grapple with my faith and beliefs, as I think all people do at times, is the profound idea that we all have imperfections . . . It's our journey to seek redemption, embrace divine love, better ourselves, cherish others, refrain from judgement, and extend forgiveness.

Kathryn Buchanan was driving to work when she heard horrific news on the radio: Twenty-two people were killed in a suicide bombing at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, England. Tears immediately streamed down her face and Buchanan later said, “That was really heartbreaking.”

Amid the deluge of devastating headlines about the event in May 2017, Buchanan noticed that “there was some coverage around all of the kindness that followed in the aftermath.” It gave her some sense of relief. For instance, people offered shelter, food, and rides to total strangers. Locals lined the streets to donate blood after the deadly attack. Cabdrivers handed out food and offered free rides.

Buchanan is a psychology professor at the University of Essex. She said, “I became very emotional and grateful that there was still goodness out there against the backdrop of horror.” Reading stories of kindness instilled a sense of hope in her that had been lost after hearing about the attack.

She began to contemplate whether being exposed to heartwarming content could counteract the known negative impacts of consuming harrowing news stories. Common symptoms include heightened stress, hopelessness, anger, anxiety, and depression. So, she started a years-long study in 2017, which was published in May of 2023.

Repeatedly throughout the research, Buchanan saw that uplifting news can provide an emotional buffer against distressing news. Buchanan also found that “there’s something special about kindness in particular.” She noted that while amusing stories diminished the effects of upsetting news, stories about acts of kindness were even more powerful.

Buchanan said, that the solution is not to avoid negative news, because “actually ignoring news all together can leave you feeling disconnected from the world you’re living in …. Following news stories that feature others’ kindness has a real set of emotional and cognitive benefits for people. It serves as a kind of reset button that allows us to have this faith in humanity.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

In a world focused on the latest disaster, despair, and the universal feeling that our nation is headed in the wrong direction, imagine the positive effects of telling people of the kindness, goodness, grace, and love of God for them. Thanksgiving would be an excellent opportunity for this kind of witness to people in despair.

Tori Petersen grew up in the foster care system where she absorbed a message that she was worthless. Although the rules were strict, she was allowed to go to church which gave some relief from a sterile group-home environment. She writes:

The pastor’s messages about forgiveness gave me the first stirrings of hope I could remember. I even asked Jesus into my heart, though I didn’t understand what that entailed. I only went up to the altar because I thought that I’d find relief from the pain of foster care and the continual sense of feeling unwanted.

As she moved through a succession of foster homes, her heart grew increasingly callous toward God and other people. Her peers would poke fun at her, saying she had “daddy issues.” At the time, Tori “believed having a father would solve lots of my problems. Perhaps someone would have been there to love me. If God was so good, I couldn’t help wondering, then why hadn’t he granted me a father?”

During many lunch periods, she enjoyed secluding herself in the English teacher’s classroom. For one of her art classes, she received permission to paint a mural on his wall. While she painted, they talked. He never shied away from a good debate or hard questions.

Tori said, “One day he asked if I believed in God. I replied that I didn’t. From my perspective, it seemed like people claimed belief in God due to social consensus more than any genuine faith.” I asked, “If most people in society didn’t believe in God, would people still believe in God?”

He paused for a long time, and then responded, “I don’t know.” She appreciated his candor, which was rare among the Christians she had known. Instead of telling her what (and how) to believe, he admitted he didn’t have all the answers.

My teacher’s honest admission of uncertainty encouraged me to start asking more questions, because deep in my heart I was searching for the Father I’d always yearned for. My heart was so drawn to the character of Jesus that I posted a YouTube video asking people to forgive me for being a mean and angry person.

Around the same time, a youth leader she’d barely seen since junior high reentered her life. She began asking her and her foster mom questions about God, which they answered patiently and kindly. Tori said, “The one question I couldn’t shake revolved around innocent children: If God is so good, then why do they suffer? All they could answer was, ‘I don’t know.’”

I didn’t know either. But I did know that when I looked at Scripture, I saw a God who didn’t shy away from pain but embraced it so that others would know love. And when I looked at the lives of those who most reminded me of Jesus, I could see how they had sacrificed on my behalf. I didn’t want to waste their suffering, or my own, but I wanted to receive it all as a gift—as a call to love others as they had loved me.

My salvation did not happen in a single grand moment, but through small miracles that gradually chipped away at the scales of skepticism. I saw God more clearly the more time I spent around people who pursued godliness, who told me who I was in Christ despite what I’d done and what had been done to me.

In the end, the father I’d always wanted turned out to be the Father who was always there, the Father who revealed himself to me in his own perfect timing.

In the fall of 1937, Ed Keefer was a senior in the school of engineering at the University of Toledo in Ohio. Tall, slender, and bespectacled, Keefer was the president of the calculus club, the vice-president of the engineering club, and a member of the school’s exclusive all-male honor society. He also invented the Cupidoscope.

The electrical device could not have been more perfectly designed to bring campus-wide fame to its creators, Keefer and his less sociable classmate John Hawley. It promised to reveal, with scientific precision, if a couple was truly in love. As the inventors explained to a United Press reporter as news of their innovation spread, the Cupidoscope delivered on its promise “in terms called ‘amorcycles,’ the affection that the college girl has for her boyfriend.”

Built in the school’s physics laboratory, the Cupidoscope was fashioned from an old radio cabinet, a motor spark coil, and an electrical resistor. To test their bond, a man and a woman would grip electrodes on either side of the Cupidoscope and move them toward one another until the woman felt a spark—not of attraction, but of electricity. The higher her tolerance for this mild current, the more of a love signal the meter registered. A needle decorated with hearts purported to show her devotion on a scale that ranged from “No hope” to “See preacher!”

It all sounds like a slightly painful party game—but the Cupidoscope was one experiment in a serious, decades-long quest to quantify love. This undertaking garnered the attention of leading scientists across the United States and in Europe in the early years of the 20th century, and it is memorialized most prominently in the penny arcade mainstay known as the Love Tester.

Possible Preaching Angle:

“How do you measure love?” The Bible gives an answer to this important question: It is measured by the self-sacrifice of the Cross—“By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers” (1 John 3:16); “Then you, being rooted and grounded in love, will have power, together with all the saints, to comprehend the length and width and height and depth of the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge” (Eph. 3:17-19).

In the horror of 9/11, Charles H. Featherstone turned from Islam to Christianity. In an issue of Christianity Today he shared his story:

Although both of his parents were raised as Lutherans, his mother never had much use for religion, and his father lost his faith in God in the jungles of South Vietnam. When his father left the army, the family settled down in Southern California where Charles attended school. He writes:

I had been on the receiving end of my father’s intense but sporadic violence for years. I learned to both fear and hate him. School quickly became unsafe as well: I was bullied, terrorized, and abused regularly. There was no one to trust. I was frightened, incredibly alone, and increasingly angry. Would anyone ever love and value me?

Searching for something to do with his life he began studying journalism at San Francisco State University. Charles said: “That’s where I found Islam. A friend introduced me to the Qur’an, and I was entranced by its words. The Muslims who first taught me welcomed me as no one else had before.”

But Islam also provided religious and political fuel for his anger. At one mosque he fell in with a group of jihadis. They discussed the texts of revolutionary Islam. One brother went to fight in Bosnia, and Charles wanted to join him. But there was Jennifer, whom he’d met at San Francisco State. There would be no one to care for her. He said, “I belonged to her, and she to me. This was a turning point. The anger that had burned in my soul was beginning to burn itself out.”

He started a journalistic career which eventually took him to offices in Lower Manhattan, right across from the World Trade Center. He was there on the morning of September, 11, 2001.

In the chaos and terror of the streets below, as I looked up at the burning twin towers and watched people tumble to their deaths, life-changing words came to me—words I suddenly heard inside my head: “My love is all that matters, and this is who I am.” I knew then that everything I understood about God, about sin and redemption, about the whole human condition, had changed. What happened was the kind of divine intervention that drove Abraham to leave home, trusting in God’s promises. The kind of force that struck Saul blind on the road to Damascus.

Charles and Jennifer began attending a church in Virginia.

The people showed me that it was the risen Jesus Christ who had spoken to me. They taught me the gospel, proclaiming the forgiveness of sins for the entire world. This is who I had met that horrible day in September. It was Jesus Christ who, in the midst of terror and death, assured me that his love is all that matters.

I belong to Jesus. He saw me and told me to follow. I left everything and obeyed. So, I trust God. For the first time in my life, I know who I am. I know whose I am. And that is all that matters.

Editor’s Note: Charles H. Featherstone is the author of The Love That Matters: Meeting Jesus in the Midst of Terror and Death .

The US has long ranked high among the world’s nations in its level of religious belief. But the Pew Research Center examined just what 80 percent of Americans actually mean when they say they “believe in God.”

Here’s what its survey of more than 4,700 adults found:

56% of Americans believe in God “as described in the Bible.”

97% God is all-loving

94% God is all-knowing

86% God is all-powerful

God determines what happens in my life…

43% All of the time

28% Most of the time

16% Some of the time

6% Hardly ever

6% Never

Talking with God…

56% I talk to God and God does not talk back

39% I talk to God and God talks back

Linguists tell us that babies of virtually all cultures use similar syllables for addressing their parents. It is easy for maturing babies to say the “Ah” vowel and “B, D, or M” consonant sounds. Parents of all cultures teach these primitive words as the titles for “Mother” and “Father.”

French: “Maman and Papa.”

Norwegian: “Mamma and Papa.”

Swahili: “Mama and Baba.”

Mandarin: “Mama and Baba.”

Chechen: “Naana and Daa.”

Every follower of Jesus knows our primal name for God—Father, or in the Aramaic, Abba, Dada. Or Daddy.

When police officer Cpl. Annette L. Goodyear holds up her hand to direct traffic in front of the local middle school, drivers usually stop. But when one driver didn’t, Goodyear didn’t have time to get angry or offended--she was instead focused on the girl crossing the street.

Cameras caught Goodyear as she pushed the child out of the way and was instead struck by the car herself, landing hard on the pavement. Goodyear said, “It was strange. As I’m lying there, I’m thinking to myself ‘this actually did happen.’ It didn’t seem real as it was happening.”

Authorities cited the driver for multiple infractions including negligent driving, failure to stop for a pedestrian in the crosswalk, and an expired registration.

Despite her hard landing, Goodyear was not significantly injured. She was in good enough spirits when she left the hospital that she immediately went to check on the student, who while not injured, was too shaken up to go to school.

Goodyear said, “She saw me standing there and as she was walking toward the door, she was getting teary-eyed. And when she got teary-eyed, then her dad started getting teary-eyed, and we all started at that point. I was just so thankful she was standing there and that she was OK.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

When you put your safety on the line for the benefit of others, you embody the sacrificial love that God has for all humanity which he showed in his Son on the Cross.

David rejoices in the fact that God's steadfast love toward those who fear him can be illustrated by the height of the heavens above the earth (Ps. 103:11). David was not an astronomer. He had no grasp on the unimaginable magnitude of the height to which he refers. But we do today.

A good way to help us fathom the unfathomable is the light-year. A light-year is how far light travels in one calendar year. Light moves at 186,000 miles in one second. Multiply 186,000 times 60 seconds, and you have a light-minute. Mul­tiply that figure by 60 minutes, and you have a light-hour. Multiply that figure by 24, and you have a light-day, and that by 365, and you have a light-year. So, light can travel almost six trillion miles (the number six followed by 12 zeroes) in a 365-day period. That's the equivalent of about 12,000,000 round trips to the moon.

Let's assume we are speeding in a jet airplane at 500 miles per hour on a trip to the moon. If we traveled non-stop, 24 hours a day, it would take us just about 3 weeks to arrive at our destination. If we wanted to visit our sun, 93 million miles from earth, it would take us a bit more than 21 years to get there. And if we wanted to reach Pluto, the dwarf planet farthest away in our solar system, our non-stop trip would last slightly longer than 900 years.

Now, try to get your mind around this: The Hubble Telescope has given us breathtaking pictures of a galaxy some 13 billion light-years from earth. That would put this galaxy 78 sextillion miles from earth (the number 78 followed by 21 zeroes).

If we are traveling at 500 miles per hour nonstop, literally 52 weeks in every year, with not a moment's pause, we would reach this galaxy in 20 quadrillion years (The number 20 followed by 15 zeroes)! And that would get us just to the farthest point that our best telescopes have yet been able to detect. This would be the mere fringe of what lies beyond. It is currently estimated that there are around two trillion galaxies in the observable Universe.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Pause for a moment and let this sink in. Are you beginning to get a feel for what it means to know that God's love for you, is greater than the distance between the heavens and the earth?

Ryan and Morgan, adopted a child from an orphanage in another country. They'd passed through all the legal processes in that country. Charlie was their son. But right before the day when they were supposed to pick Charlie up from the orphanage, things changed. There were some political upheavals, and the country froze the process. No more children were going to be able to leave the country.

Charlie could not come to Ryan and Morgan. So, they decided to go to him. They flew over from the US and basically camped outside of the orphanage. They spent half their time with their son and the other half lobbying the courts and meeting with government officials, pleading with them to release their son.

After a few weeks Morgan came home, but Ryan stayed. It was at Christmas time. This was not where he wanted to be at Christmas—away from home, far from family. But here was a father who loved his son. Since his son could not come to him, he was going to go to that son, and he was going to fight for that son. There would be more days and weeks of struggle, but, wonderfully, Ryan was eventually able to bring Charlie home.

That Christmas, as Ryan battled corrupt court systems on the other side of the world … he was a picture of the kind of "Eternal Father" that Jesus is for anyone who asks him to be. Jesus went far further for us than Ryan went for his son. He didn't leave a country of privilege to move to a country of poverty. No, he left the riches of heaven to come to a world of pain. He did all that because he loves us. He did all that because he wants to be with us. He came to us to ensure that we could go to be with him, and it cost him far more than a plane ticket.

Terry Wogan was a veteran BBC broadcaster on the Radio 2 breakfast show for nearly 40 years. When Wogan was asked how many listeners he had, he said, “Only one.” In reality, he had over nine million. But in Wogan’s mind, he wanted every listener to feel like he was speaking directly to them.

Possible Preaching Angle:

God is like that. When you pray, you join with billions of other sometimes desperate and needy people--asking for his help. But he hears you as if you were the only one speaking. He speaks to you as if you were his only listener.