19th Century Scottish congregational pastor George MacDonald, a strong influence on C. S. Lewis once wrote, “Love has ever in view the absolute loveliness of that which it beholds.” That profound truth has remarkable implications, first about God’s love for us and secondly in regard to the genuineness of our love for God.
God clearly saw in us amazing potential and striking loveliness when He sent Christ to earth in the incarnation with a commitment to becoming the atonement for our sins. Paul says that in the commendation of God’s love for us, Christ died for us while we were still sinners. And yet He saw the loveliness of our hearts in their original creation in God’s likeness and in their re-creation affected by Calvary’s cross. God’s unfailing love has ever in view the absolute loveliness of those whom He created and redeemed. Amazing love!
But what of this thing we call loving God. Do we look to Him to ever behold and learn more of His loveliness or do we turn to Him only for help, rescue, or an answer? It was the Psalmist who said His only desire was to “dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life to behold the beauty of the Lord” (Psalm 27:4).
Is that our desire? Have we learned to slow ourselves, to steady our hearts that we might forever gaze upon the absolute loveliness of the One we claim to love?
Lord, help us to measure our love not by our confession but by our action and by our surrender to the discipline of ever beholding your loveliness.
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