all you need is love

So here's Jubie meeting her first pastor. "Pastor the Conquistador" that is. She loved that dog! Thanks goes to Jenny for introducing them. I think it was love at first lick.

I have never loved anyone else the way I love her. It amazes me, what God gives--this good, challenging, growing thing of love. When Jesus said that we must become like little children to enter the kingdom of heaven, I don't think he meant, "be more innocent or more pure..." Be more, be more, be more...this is what we are constantly telling ourselves and yet, I don't know that he ever asks us to be more anything when he is more for us in us.

I think he was asking us to simply let him love us. Let him love unreservedly and extravagantly, even when we don't deserve it, don't feel as though we measure up. It's a hard thing for adults to let themselves be loved and to admit to needing it, but children--they have no qualms about expressing their need for love whenever and wherever it suits them. Whether it's being held, changed, fed, or played with, Jubilee tells me in her own baby way what she needs, and my response is always the same: I am here for you.

God is just like that, overwhelming more so! We just don't always accept it. But--He Is. And just as Jubilee will get older and my expressions of love for her change in response to her growth and maturity, God takes me deeper into his love as I age in him. I suppose this is what relationship with him is all about.

I was feeling a bit down in the dumps before I started this post.
It's been one of those "I could tear my hair out weep a thousand tears eat a pint of ben-and-jerry's" days, if you know what I mean. And I won't say that magically everything is better now, but I definitely feel my spirit lifted a bit when I think about the riches of his graceful love. It's like digging your fingers into dark, loamy, soil to plant a seed. That seed may have fallen into its tomb of dirt, but it is there, surrounded by darkness, that it is given the nutrients it needs to break forth, sprout, and grow.

And because I love this song...because this is a feel good post...
All You Need is Love! Sing it with me now...