Psalm 36:5-7

Your unfailing love, O LORD, is as vast as the heavens; your faithfulness reaches beyond the clouds. Your righteousness is like the mighty mountains, your justice like the ocean depths. You care for people and animals alike, O LORD. How precious is your unfailing love, O God!

Do you remember the first time you heard someone tell you that they loved you? Perhaps it was your parents or a friend or a partner. It’s an inexpressibly wonderful experience. It changes everything. You are special, and the whole world looks different.

In his psalms, David says many wonderful things about God but most incredible of all is that God, the Creator of the universe, actually loves us. It’s always precious when you see a child and their parent expressing love for one another and the expression “I love you to the moon and back” is often heard. Here, thousands of years ago, David was looking for similar language to express the unfailing love of God and concluded that his love is as vast as the heavens, and his faithfulness reaches beyond the clouds. He was pushing at the limits of language to express how amazing and complete God’s love for us is.

These majestic words are set within a psalm in which David was reflecting on how wicked people can be. They have no fear of God. They are arrogant and their words are wicked and deceitful, and they spend their time plotting evil. He then moved directly from these reflections to describe the perfect love of God. I love that! It would be easy to move from reflecting on the terrible evil of the world to a tirade of anger against human wickedness, but no! As he examined the awful state of the world he used it as a springboard for worship. I suggest that you might like to listen to today’s news and do exactly the same!

Question

What does the love of God mean to you?

Prayer

Creator God, thank you for your perfect love for me. Help me to open my life to your love today, and then to pass it on. Amen