It's The Love

Yesterday was father’s day, and you could tell by the increase in diners at every restaurant, at least in our area. You know it’s a holiday when it’s hard to get a table somewhere, or when there is a waitlist.

My daughters got in on the act as well, the older one drawing me an ‘I love you daddy’ piece of art, and the younger one scribbling doodles on a piece of paper, but proud and happy to hand it to me nonetheless.

It melted my heart, and I walked around, smiling the rest of the day. To anyone else, what they had handed me wasn’t worth much if anything. To me, it was priceless because it wasn’t the thing itself; it was the love with which it was rendered and delivered.

As I’ve stated before, fatherhood has opened my eyes to the love of God in ways I could not heretofore imagine. Once again, a new layer of the reciprocity of love was revealed to me through the simple act of my daughters handing me two pieces of what objectively are scribbled on paper.

When we desire to please God, He reacts not to the success or failure of our endeavor, or how perfectly we pulled it off, but rather to the action itself, and the underlying motivator which is love.

We cannot see God as an Olympic judge, scrutinizing the difficulty, composition, or execution, taking off points if we didn’t stick the landing perfectly, but as a loving Father whose heart overflows when we make a sincere, genuine, and full-hearted attempt to do something pleasing in His sight.

God would rather have the scratches and doodles born of love, than a work of art born of pride, arrogance, and self-interest.

God responds to love, and acts performed in love. He rejoices when His children are engaged and interested in knowing Him, and bringing Him offerings, not out of a sense of fear, or an underlying hope that what they offer will be multiplied tenfold in some future time, but because they love Him deeply, fully, unequivocally, and genuinely as a child loves its father.

God knows the genuineness of our hearts, just as a father knows the genuineness of his child’s heart.

It’s easy to tell when something is done out of obligation or true love. It’s easy to tell when something is done out of self-interest, or thoughtfulness and affection.

This is why the notion of fire insurance when it comes to serving God is nothing short of delusion. It’s the love that God responds to, it’s the love that God sees, and even if what you are offering him is likened to intelligible scribbles on a page, because it is done in love, He will receive it, and rejoice. 

With love in Christ, 

Michael Boldea Jr.