Wonderful Love

Psalm 36:5 – Your love, O Lord, reaches to the heavens, your faithfulness to the skies. (NIV)

Sometimes on Sunday mornings, when all of our young families come to the front of the church, I sing old choruses with them. It always amazes me that some action songs that I learned as a child still captivate the hearts and minds of the children in our church. One such chorus is called "Jesus' Love is Very Wonderful", which I can remember being taught to me at a seaside mission on the west coast of Scotland forty years ago.

I still love the refrain, because of the goofy actions that go along with it: reaching up to the ceiling, crouching down low, and then spreading arms out as wide as possible. When we sing it in church, the children shriek with delight and jump up and down, just like I did on those Scottish beaches decades ago.

I don't know if the psalmist ever had actions that went along with his words of faith, but his description of God's love reaching up to the heavens was his way of expressing the magnitude of God's loving-kindness. It was a way of saying that all creation is immersed and surrounded by God's love. There is no geographical area on earth or above in space where God's love does not exist. The apostle Paul put it even better when he wrote:

Romans 8:39 – Neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (NIV)

Today, let us all rejoice in the infinite love of God, and as we joyfully experience it in our hearts, let's share it with all those whom we encounter.

Prayer: Lord Jesus, Your love is very wonderful. It's so high, we can't get over it; so low, we can't go under it; so wide, we can't get around it. O wonderful love! Amen.