Of Understanding God

While doing the dishes this afternoon, I put on a little mood music for Micaiah and I to move our hips to (because dang that girl is cute when she gets those legs going).  Toby Mac's Portable Sounds was my album of choice.  And by the second track the wheels in my head were turning.  Never before have I been hit by thoughts so profound to my tiny mind that I literally had to stop what I was doing just to process through it all.  As I stood, with the open dishwasher next to me, a sink of dirty kitchenware at my back, I simply stared in awe at my precious daughter who was making like a busy bee, alternating between dancing and doing her own dishes at her little wooden kitchen, feeling just a smidgen of what God must feel watching His children.

The thought that so captured my mind was brought upon by the lyrics, "I was made to love and be loved by You."  These words took me to Chapter 4 of David Platt's Radical, which we had discussed only the night before in Bible Study; it ponders the why of our existence on Earth.  As a Christian, I had heard many times before that we were created to glorify God.  And I would be lying if I said the thought didn't cross my time EVERY time I heard that, and even more so in the detailed description given by Platt, that such a reasoning paints God in such an arrogant light.

That He would create an entire world of people - over 6 billion of us at this point - just to worship Him.

To my human mind, I cannot fathom someone who would do that and not be considered full of himself.  And every time I have to remind myself that God's ways are not our ways and His thoughts are on such a higher plane than my own and I will most likely never understand.

But today I understood.

While looking at that wonderful little dancer, I asked myself, why did I have children? 

I know what we all say what we want for our children - for them to grow up, to be happy, successful (hopefully on God's terms and not the world's), and to impact the world around them.  But that's not why I chose to have children.  I suppose there was the small part of me that just thought that's what we do.  We were made to multiply.  But there is much more of me, that nurturing, motherly part that wanted a little one to love.  I just wanted to hold a baby in my arms, look at her with all the love in my heart and know, without a doubt, that she loved me, too.  It wasn't a need, per se, but it was a strong desire.

God, too, had that desire.  He, of course, is lacking in nothing and does not need our love - but, oh, how it pleases His heart.  We were created in His image to be loved by Him and also to love Him back.  Which is why He has never given up on the human race altogether - even if it just meant only sparing Noah.  It wasn't arrogance, it was love.

Because any parent will tell you that no matter how frustrating that little one can get - no matter the aggravation we experience or the deliberate disobedience we must punish - when those tiny arms wrap around you and you hear the little voice say, "I love you" in words which are barely comprehensible, your heart melts and you know you would put up with anything just for moments like those.

And so God does - because He loves it when we tell Him we love Him and when we glorify His holy name.

On a further note, we were all separated at birth from our Heavenly Father and every time one is "born again" and recognizes their "birth Father" there is a party up in Heaven.  And, thus, it is our job, as His children, to bring others back to the very one Who created them so they, too, can enter into that loving relationship.  We should yearn to see others proclaiming the Name of their Father in love.

We were made to love and be loved by Him.