Everlasting God, Everlasting Love

The LORD has appeared of old to me, saying:
"Yes, I have loved you with an everlasting love;
Therefore with lovingkindness I have drawn you."
~ Jeremiah 31:3 (NKJV)

Have you not known?
Have you not heard?
The everlasting God, the LORD,
The Creator of the ends of the earth,
Neither faints nor is weary.
His understanding is unsearchable.
He gives power to the weak,
And to those who have no might He increases strength.
~ Isaiah 40:28-29 (NKJV)

[I pray that you] may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height—to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
~ Ephesians 3:18-19 (NKJV)

"I have loved you with an everlasting love."

These words are stenciled as the border in my girls' bedroom. (The other three walls have other love verses.) For several years now my daughters have slept with their heads at the opposite end of the bed so they can see this verse.

Human love is such an uncertain thing sometimes. It ebbs and flows with the winds of our emotions, circumstances, and time. Once close friends move away or move on. Even in families, sisters and brothers, parents and children can drift apart.

Not so with God's love. The everlasting God spoke of His everlasting love at a time when He seemed anything but loving. Jerusalem was in the process of being devastated and destroyed for its horrific idolatry and child sacrifice. Famine provoked cannibalism. Bodies lay in heaps. Things got as ugly as ugly gets in the Bible.

At such times God's love and goodness may seem nonexistent. But it's often in our darkest hours that we're able to most diligently seek Him, and thereby know reassurance of His love.

Everlasting God, how can we know love which passes knowledge? How do we see in four dimensions of width and length and depth and height? Surely no matter how much we hear or know of Your love, we've only begun to plumb its depths. Please let us never doubt such love. Please show us how to share such love.

[Note: I typically work through a book of the Bible in about a month, and have been going through two chapters a day of Jeremiah. But I simply must linger over the beauty of these next few chapters for several days.]

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