Under the Wings of God by Cornelius PlantingaSample

Day Two: With All Your Mind

Scripture: Deuteronomy 6:4–9, Matthew 22:34–40, 1 Corinthians 2:9-10

“Love the Lord your God with all your mind” (Matthew 22:27), means to love God intellectually—to become a student of God. Think of some of the biblical images for God. In the Bible, God is lion and lamb, church and home, fire and water. God is not only a leopard and eagle, but also a moth; not only a parent, but also a child; not only a king but a warrior.

Loving God with all one’s mind means taking an interest in God and in the peculiarities of God. It means letting God be God. The idea is that God gets to write His own autobiography. Our calling is not to rewrite the script but to find our role there and fill it.

Think it over. If our beloved acts well, we look upon the action as typical. If our beloved acts badly, we look upon the action as an aberration. To love somebody is to give that person a big line of moral and spiritual credit. So it is with our love of God.

It does sometimes look as if God acts badly. It looks as if God goes off duty while traffickers enslave women and children. It looks as if God blesses a lot of the wrong people and ignores a lot of the right ones. It looks for all the world as if God has a lot of explaining to do. That’s what Job thought, and Job is in the Bible.

How do you love God when, for a while, you can’t make any sense out of God? This is a question much bigger than I am, but I think we must trust Jesus Christ. Even before His crucifixion Jesus suffered more than most, and He says we ought to love God with everything we have. He clears the way to love God despite all. Doesn’t God deserve at least the same benefit of the doubt that we give to anyone we love? It’s a matter of faithfulness. It’s a matter of intellectual humility. It’s a matter of mere loyalty.

Whether we are nine years old or ninety, whether students or lifelong students, our job is to love God with everything we have, including with the trillion-cell wonder that is the human brain.

Do you give God the benefit of the doubt when His ways appear confusing or lacking? Prayer: Loving God, you are rich beyond human comprehension. But if I love you with all of my mind, you will reveal more of your greatness, thereby enriching me for Jesus’s sake. Amen.