Intense Love

The Bible is full of examples of intense love...

*The ultimate= God sending his son to die a painful death on a cross then bringing him back from the dead and ascending him into heaven.  Intense in so many ways...but 3 days later...complete resurrection and restoration of God's promise.

*Joseph's love and devotion to Mary...I mean, can you imagine?  His fiance turns up pregnant...and He listened to an angel and stayed by her side.  He trusted that God's plan would be revealed.  Intense love of both Mary AND most important, God.  Joseph was human like us.  Don't you think he had reservations, at least for a moment?

*Abraham and his son, Isaac=Can.you.even.imagine.  INTENSE.  Abraham was going to slay his own son at God's command.  Then God said, 'nevermind ... you were faithful...don't touch your son!'  He must have grabbed his son, fallen to his knees, and wept happy tears.

*Ruth & Naomi= The scripture that comes to mind..."Where you go, I will go, and where you stay I will stay.  Your people will be my people, and your God, my God.  Where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried.  May the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely, if anything but death separates you and me." (Ruth 1: 16-17)  In other words, Ruth told her mom-in-law...look, there is no one left but us.  I won't go back to my family.  I will stay with you til the day I die.  What a blessing for Naomi, who had lost her husband AND her sons...she must have felt comforted, say, less 'alone', by Ruth's wonderful devotion.

David=danced in the streets...total abandonment to what others thought b'c he loved God and loved praising God.  And boy, did people talk.  Sure they did.  They talked about him, all right.  His own wife basically mocked him to his face.  And to summarize from my very theologically-challenged brain, David said, "That's not what matters.  I'm going to care only about what God thinks."

There are SO MANY OTHER EXAMPLES.  I have been thinking of this lately, because I love my family intensely.  And I come by it honest.  When we are together, we are such passionate-about-everything-people....which is a good thing at times and a hard thing at times too.  God gives humans the ability and the desire to love, care for, take care of at times, laugh with, cry with each other.  All these people I spoke of above...they struggled too, with their intense love/devotion.  They might have even struggled MORE b'c of their intense love/devotion.  Obviously, aside from God, they were humans.  I am trying to truly grasp that.  Jesus walked among them BUT they were humans, with emotions, fears, faith that had to grow from small to big, a wide gamet of emotions.  This is such an understatement, but we know it all turned out okay in the end because ultimately, they loved GOD with the very most intensity, which is the lesson I am learning.  It's hard to think of loving my children less on the one hand, but on the other, not so much.  How can I not love their creator and be MORE passionate/intense about HE WHO CREATED THEM IN MY WOMB.  "...he who made you, who formed you in the womb..." (Isaiah 44:2)  That is my prayer.  God, I love you more. I am learning to be more emotional and passionate about You, and without apology.  I want to be about Your business, which happens to be LOVING OTHERS AND DOING UNTO OTHERS AS WE WOULD HAVE OTHERS DO UNTO US.  Thank you for Your strength.  Infuse me with it.  I LOVE YOU INTENSELY!