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Psalm 36:5-12  

Your love, LORD, reaches to the heavens, your faithfulness to the skies. Your righteousness is like the highest mountains, your justice like the great deep. You, LORD, preserve both people and animals. How priceless is your unfailing love, O God! People take refuge in the shadow of your wings. They feast on the abundance of your house; you give them drink from your river of delights. For with you is the fountain of life; in your light we see light. Continue your love to those who know you, your righteousness to the upright in heart. May the foot of the proud not come against me, nor the hand of the wicked drive me away. See how the evildoers lie fallen—thrown down, not able to rise!

When our first daughter, Brittany, was born I was surprised to feel a new channel of love open up in my heart. I thought I had expended all of my love on my wife, Lori. I didn’t know I had the capacity to love another person that much. And when we found out another baby was on the way, I wondered how I could love a second child as much as Brittany. But when our son was born, I learned that my love for him didn’t “borrow” from my love for Brittany. A new reservoir of love was released for Garrison…and then for Lara….and then for Mackenzie.

The capacity to love our children gives us just a hint of God’s great love for us. It cannot be contained. It has no bounds. It has no limits. It is unconditional and unfailing. There is nothing we as true believers can do to make God love us more; there is nothing we can do to make God love us less. His love is perfect.

Eugene Peterson says it like this in The Message:

God’s love is meteoric,
his loyalty astronomic,
His purpose titanic,
his verdicts oceanic.
Yet in his largeness
nothing gets lost;
Not a man, not a mouse,
slips through the cracks.

Father, thank You for loving me with an unfailing and limitless love. In Jesus’ name. Amen.