Herein is love, not that we have loved God…

When I think about my life, sometimes I think of it as one unfurling roll of fruit by the foot. Does anyone remember that stuff? I never ate it (I loathe candy). But I used to visualize my life as a uniformly wide, sometimes sticky ribbon winding through the years. Some years swirl purple and sky blue; others are stained red on grey.

But I’m beginning to think it’s nothing like a ribbon at all. Am I aging, or does my memory have fits and starts, bright sunny clearings and murky morass ("thar be dragons"-level mystery), potholes of incoherence? There are themes and threads, the warp and weft of shifting allegiances, priorities, strengths, relationships, and physical locations. There are milestones, some wood, grass and stubble thumbtacks, some scattered nuggets of gold, silver, and precious stones.

It’s not a ribbon at all. If anything, as I retrace my footsteps, all I see are God’s fingerprints on every last detail of a long trawl, a net that starts out as tatters of memories, that gradually grows stronger and more complete up to the present day. Maybe the net lines a river that started far up a mountain as a crop of dewdrops.

I was trying to tell an abridged version of my life story, and as I hopped from anecdote to anecdote on this river, like stepping stones, I felt like I saw for the first time that my life was part of the mighty flowing of God, the course of His move from eternity past to eternity future. On the one hand, there was not a single episode of my life that was about myself alone: it was all God, working within me and around me. On the other hand, there’s not a single part of God’s plan that involves God alone: He restricts Himself to accomplishing only that which is accomplished together with man. So in an infinitesimal fraction, God’s plan for all creation is being accomplished, being narrated, through my life! As I was telling my story, I was overwhelmed with the sense that I was not telling my story, but the Lord’s story, of how He has drawn me to fall in love with Him with every fresh step. Lord, how I love You! I love You more today than I ever have before. And tomorrow, by Your mercy, by the constancy of Your radiant face, I will love You more.

I’m writing this on a plane leaving Madagascar. I came here hoping that my work this summer would have some meaning, would bring something of value into the world. But in the last hours of leaving, I am filled; I am looking away unto Jesus. I came, fightings within and fears without, wondering whether I had made a mistake in coming. Did I listen to the sense of life and peace in me, or did I purposely manufacture a pale mimic for myself? Was the Lord merely permissively allowing me to squander and wander a summer? I am leaving full of rest and assurance—the Lord’s shepherding hand has never left me, just as it never had all the days of my life. Whether it was ideal or not, I did come here, and the Lord’s hand followed me. Hallelujah! I am loved beyond measure. I love Him with all my measure.

Hymn 166
Praise to the Lord, who hath fearfully,
 wondrously, made thee!
Health hath vouchsafed and, when
 heedlessly falling, hath stayed thee.
 What need or grief
Ever hath failed of relief?
Wings of His mercy did shade thee.

I have seen now that my life has always wended its way under the mighty shadow of His wings. And more and more surpassingly, He is turning my path towards the way He is going—to eternity.