God's Love

As a teacher often times in class I will ask the young students why we have rules? They have learned the correct answers and are more accepting and appreciative of them, or at least when they are following them.

I often take it one step further and ask them why do their parent's have rules? This is sometimes harder for them to answer because it has not always been explained to them. I make it funny and ask do you think your parent's don't like you and want to make your life miserable? For young kids they know this is not true. Of course I know not to ask teenagers that question, because somewhere along the line we tend to think of parent's as our enemies.

Just the other day I asked my daughter, soon to be 22, to please break up her trip going back to school halfway and visit her Aunt and spend the night, then proceed on the next day. This would allow her a chance to visit as well as being more rested while driving. As you may imagine, instead of seeing my suggestion or request as caring for her safety and valuing the family, she saw it as a need to hide her intentions from me, as if I was the enemy without her best interest at heart. As a parent this is baffling to me! How can little kids get it, then as we get older we lose perspective?

This brings me to how God must feel about us sometimes. He has given his best with guidelines for success and happiness and somewhere along the way we think we know better than God and try to hide what we do, because we believe we know what is best and we go our own way!

 I am grateful for a loving God that no matter how far we stray, he never seeks to punish us for our disobedience, yet continues to pursue us in love calling us back to him for our good, so that we don't get hurt by our choices. Selfless love, it really is to hard to imagine, until you become a parent.... I am reminded of Nineveh in Genesis, as a great example of God's mercy, yet Jonah and his desire for punishment to the people.

As I reflect, I am thankful to the Lord for never giving up on me, and helping me to be a loving parent, modeling his love, as he has so graciously always been to me, even in my disobedience.

Godspeed....