The Luckiest Manنموونە

 I’d been a follower of Christ for decades, so why had I never understood the penetrating, sweeping, powerful fullness of God’s love? Why had I never experienced this kind of infinite wholeness? Why did I think God’s love was contingent on my hard work, my ability to build a canal to divert a portion of it my way? Why was it so difficult to accept, to understand the breadth and depth of this unconditional love?

The questions were rhetorical, but the answer was not.

My father.

I reached into my memory, remembered his disapproving gaze, the way his approval was always conditioned on performance, on achievement, on success. I remember believing that if I could just measure up, then I’d receive his love and acceptance. His love was limited, finite, conditioned. He did the best he knew how, I suppose, but his best had wounded me. And somehow, I’d conflated my natural father with the Father of the supernatural.

Father, father, father—what did it mean to have a loving father?

That’s when the Scriptures came, but they came in new language. They came like messages meant just for me.

You are my adopted child.

I sensed the crack in my stony heart, felt a trickle of love.

You are my son.

This stream of love pooled, began to fill me.

I am love. Know and rely on the love I have for you.

Here was the river, picking up the sediment of my pain, the silt of all my wasted efforts to matter.

Know my love, my unending, immeasurable love without conditions. I love because I am love, and my love is bigger than you can understand. My love will fill you with my fullness, just as you are, regardless of your performance, even in your emptiness.

I was now in the ocean of his love, and for the first time in so many years, I could feel. There was freedom, gratitude, joy, even sorrow for the years lost—I felt it all. More than anything, though, I felt wholly known, fully accepted, and loved without any requirement to measure up. I might not ever earn the success I’d chased for so many years in so many areas of my life, but in this love, I realized the gospel truth—I didn’t need to. This love—there was nothing to do but receive it just as it was, just as it was receiving me.