redeeming love.

"Therefore I am now going to allure her;
I will lead her into the desert
and speak tenderly to her.

There I will give her back her vineyards,
and will make the Valley of Achor a door of hope.
There she will sing as in the days of her youth,
as in the day she came up out of Egypt.

"In that day," declares the LORD,
"you will call me 'my husband';
you will no longer call me 'my master. '
I will remove the names of the Baals from her lips;
no longer will their names be invoked.

In that day I will make a covenant for them
with the beasts of the field and the birds of the air
and the creatures that move along the ground.
Bow and sword and battle
I will abolish from the land,
so that all may lie down in safety.

I will betroth you to me forever;
I will betroth you in righteousness and justice,
in love and compassion.

I will betroth you in faithfulness,
and you will acknowledge the LORD.

"In that day I will respond,"
declares the LORD—
"I will respond to the skies,
and they will respond to the earth;

and the earth will respond to the grain,
the new wine and oil,
and they will respond to Jezreel.

I will plant her for myself in the land;
I will show my love to the one I called 'Not my loved one. '
I will say to those called 'Not my people,' 'You are my people';
and they will say, 'You are my God.' "

I've been thinking a lot about things, realizing a lot about our creator. It's hard to understand much of anything about God when everything is perfect and wonderful and going exactly the way we'd like. When things are good its easy to forget about how great He is to us, how incredible His love is for us, how endless His mercy is. When things are just going like they always have, we don't see the passion that God has for us like we do when things get bad. It's amazing to me, how strongly His presence shows up when we're in suffering. How strongly He can reveal His character when He wants to woo us back into His sight. How much He wants to remind us to follow Him, to live for Him, to lavish over Him.

Oh how He's made us relational people, and I'm seeing more and more how much He uses that to reveal His nature. Singing about His 'redeeming love' without anything to base it off of only sounds like nice and pretty words to me, a concept that I can't fully grasp or understand. Not until I've hurt another person I care so tremendously about and I'm at the mercy of that. Now, redeeming love sounds like the most amazing, beautiful thing I could even think of. And you're telling me He offers that to us every single second of our lives? You're telling me He loves me like that? You can't be serious. He's taking my breath away.

And I just picture Him leading me into the desert, into the middle of everything dead, away from all surroundings and familiarities - where the heck are we, God? I don't like it here, I'm scared, I don't know if I can handle this, God, what are you doing, why are you bringing me here? And He says oh beloved. I will speak tenderly to you. I will forget about everything that has happened. I will put behind all of the ways you have wronged me. I will give you hope, I will give you joy, I will give you love, I will give you life, I will give you peace, I will give you all of me.

His capacity for love is unreal.