Deuteronomy 10:14-15

14 Behold, to the LORD your God belong heaven and the heaven of heavens, the earth with all that is in it. 15 Yet the LORD set his heart in love on your fathers and chose their offspring after them, you above all peoples, as you are this day. 16 Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no longer stubborn.

It seems everywhere I turn this week there is someone advertising sentimentality to get me to buy my mother an expensive gift for Mother’s Day. But what all of this advertising is really doing is making me think about my Mom and all she has done, and that leads me to her most significant contribution to my life, my introduction to Jesus Christ and God the Father.

I tend to think of God as an annoyed parent more than I do a loving father. As I think about the gook in my heart, all my sin and darkness, it is easy for me to forget that God loves me, I mean really loves me. I understand the significance of who he is. I understand that in his holiness I am filthy, but yet it says here in verse 15 that the “LORD set his heart in love” on his people. But as I consider God and compare our relationship a bit with my own with my children I think perhaps I understand where God comes from. We are his children, and nothing can change the love he has for us. We will frustrate, anger, hurt and disappoint him, but he has chosen to adopt and love us in spite of our doings. I thank God for this incredible, extravagant love that is so wonderfully modeled here on earth in healthy parental models. I don’t love every choice and action my child makes, but I love that little person with all my heart and soul.

Dearest Father, thank you for you love. Fill me completely with your love, so that through that place of loving abiding I can go out and bless and love all of those people you put in my path. Help me to bless my family and friends and strangers today out the overflow from your love.