Let God love and defend us
Let God love and defend us
February 16th, 2025 – Communion Meditation
Celebrating Valentine’s Day this week reminded me of a book I read about 30 years ago. It was a popular book that influenced many people I knew. The gist of it was to help people to try and figure out their “love languages,” general ways that people express and experience love in relating to one another, with each person usually speaking one primary love language. It’s not the worst idea I’ve heard (and the author sold a lot of books), and yet I wonder if ideas like this become popular because they offer some kind of formula so you can figure out who you are.
Books like this cater to our desires for quick fixes and magic potions to reveal the secrets to happiness. This particular book even includes the word “secret” in the subtitle! We see similar claims in horoscopes, personality tests, and teenage dystopian movies. All of these attempts to figure out who we are by sorting ourselves into categories, even if there are threads of truth in them, seem to me to be slightly more sophisticated versions of the children’s game “he loves me, he loves me not.”
In the deepest part of the human soul, we all have a strong desire to be loved. Because we are not convinced that we will be unconditionally loved as we are, we hide parts of ourselves even as we pursue external affirmations and assurances in all kinds of ways. They all hook into our unending quest to discover whether or not we’re loved, and how deeply or dependably we’re loved.
In John 17:20 (NLT), Jesus prays “not only for these disciples but also for all who will ever believe in me through their message.” And he goes on to pray for us, “May they experience such perfect unity that the world will know that you sent me and that you love them as much as you love me.” And 1 John 3:16 (NIV) explains that “We know what real love is because Jesus gave up his life for us.”
The good news that Jesus showed and told is the assurance and affirmation we all seek: God loves every person, including you and me, so much that God gave God’s self in the person of Jesus Christ. Jesus loves us so much that he gave up his very life for us. Jesus’ life, ministry, death, and resurrection enable us to enter into and experience the eternal embrace of God, God’s perfect love, right here, right now, and forever.
We get to choose how we respond to God. As we receive the body and blood of Christ today, I want to invite us to lay down all of our defenses, surrender all that we are to God, and let God love and defend us. As we sang in a beautiful hymn yesterday at Meadowbrook: “Joyful, joyful, we adore thee, God of glory, Lord of love. Hearts unfold like flow’rs before thee, opening to the sun above. Melt the clouds of sin and sadness. Drive the dark of doubt away. Giver of immortal gladness, fill us with the light of day!” And in another hymn: “Praise to the Lord, who doth prosper thy work and defend thee. Surely his goodness and mercy here daily attend thee. Ponder anew what the Almighty can do, if with his love He befriend thee.”
At the Last Supper, Jesus took a loaf of bread, and after blessing it he broke it, gave it to those with him and said, “Take, eat; this is my body.” Let us eat together.
Jesus then took a cup, and after giving thanks he gave it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you; for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.” Let us drink together.
