Jesus Loves Me 

   

As a child I sang, “Jesus loves me/ this I know/ for the Bible tells me so/”.  Secure and safe in a loving, Christian home, that was enough for me.  Simple.  Pure.  Trusting.  Like a dandelion, it rooted firmly in my childhood heart.  Jesus loves me.  How do I know, you ask?  Because the Bible says so, Silly!

 But life doesn’t stay so neat, tidy and sheltered.  Things happen and things are spoken that wound us to the core.  People, in their humanity, fail us and we fail them.  We put up walls around our vulnerable places to protect ourselves.  “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.”  But now I say it to remind myself.  Like the dandelions, it comes back again and again, nearly impossible to uproot.  But also like the dandelions, this assurance seems to pass quickly.  It doesn’t satisfy the way it once did.

 There was a time when I wished that I could go back to that childlike innocence and trust.  Afterall, we are told we need to have the faith of a child.  And the truth is, we do need to have the complete trust that comes so easily to a child.  But as innocent and pure as my devotion was back then, it was also as shallow as the puddles I splashed in.

 Paul writes to the church in Ephesus:  “And I pray that Christ will be more and more at home in your hearts as you trust in him.  May your roots go down deep into the soil of God’s marvelous love.  And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love really is.  May you experience the love of Christ, though it is so great you will never fully understand it.  Then you will be filled with the fullness of life and power that comes from God.” (Ephesians 3:17-19)

 Now that’s the kind of love I want to have.  That’s the kind of love I want everyone I know to experience.  Jesus loves me, this I know, because I heard Him tell me so.  He walked with me down the dark and lonely paths.  He celebrated with me during the good times.  He comforted me when I cried.  He whispered to me, “This is the path.  Walk this way.”  He sees me as I am and loves me anyway.  He confides His heart to me and reveals to me more and more of who He is.

 It is one thing to hear and believe that Jesus loves you.  It is an entirely different matter to experience the full volume of his love – to know its length, and width, and height and depth.  Even then, we will never fully understand it this side of heaven.  This doesn’t happen when life is all butterflies and summer breezes.  This kind of intimate connection only grows in the raging storms and bitter winters of life.  It is then that God gets to put the walk to His talk.

 Jesus loves me.  This I know, because He has shown me so.