Beyond measure
Wednesday, November 20, 2024
Ephesians 3:18
May you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is.
Last night we were discussing the great Pauline prayer ending Ephesians 3. It’s really something. Oh, that we should make this our prayer too, and that we should pray it for those we love (or ought to love)!
I started to use an analogy of a measuring tape. I have too many of them, and each has its story. Of course you can’t measure love with a tape. But to extend Paul’s analogy, the problem with measuring God’s love this way is simple. Your tape would quickly reach its end. God’s love would not.
A better extended metaphor is a journey. Pace out the extent of God’s love. Let’s start walking. Try to keep count.
How far would you get? How many steps would you take? How much ground would you cover?
Let’s hope you’ve got the good walking shoes on. You’re going to need them.
Whatever our journey, we travel into life in God’s love. Step by step. We don’t know how long our journey is; but count as many steps as we might, that basic fact never changes. Every step is taken within God’s love. Sometimes the walk is peaceful; sometimes a slog; sometimes rocky with obstacles.
God’s love never runs out.
The really good news is, we are never really traveling farther from the center of God’s love than when we began. No inverse-square law here: his love does not diminish at all as we get farther from our starting point. Not only is there no outer border, but even over a journey of years, the light of his love never gets any darker (though from time to time it may seem to). If anything, our journey takes us into a future God already inhabits, one already filled full with his positive disposition toward us, his eagerness to enjoy fellowship with us, his never-ending gift of himself to us.
Even when we have come to what we think is the end, we are only just arriving at the reality of his love.