By Melody Moore
“… there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother (or sister)” (Proverbs 18:24 NIV). (Parenthetical comment added.)
I hope you are as blessed as I am to have a best friend that you can count on no matter what.
It’s just past 11 PM when I received a text from my life-long best friend asking me if I’m okay because she hadn’t heard from me today and I hadn’t posted anything to Facebook. Friends that check on us are worth their weight in something much more precious than gold.
Last fall I was put in the hospital with diabetic ketoacidosis. I had some kind of internal infection that sent my blood sugar soaring over 500. I lost several days due to the water that was pushed into my brain. By lost, I mean that I was unconscious for some number of days and have no or little recall of the days after. There’s simply no room in the brain for extra fluids.
This all came to a head in the middle of the night. My last conscious thought before I lost lucidity was to call my mom for help. After that, everything is very jumbled and in small pieces. To work, to friends, to most of the world, I just disappeared. After being in the hospital for a few days, I was awake and able to communicate but poorly.
One afternoon, my nurse walked in and handed me a cell phone. On the other end was my life-long best friend. I cried out, “You found me!” and continued to cry. Someone loved me so much that when there were no posts, the texts and calls went unanswered, and calls to my mom’s house went unreturned (mom was beside me the whole time and didn’t care about checking a machine), all measures necessary to find me went into play. Even after 40 years of friendship, her love stunned me.
Even more stunning is how much our Holy Father and Savior loves us. I’ve watched people wrestle with trying to understand that love. It’s so big, it can be quite difficult for our minds to grasp it. Once you realize, really get how much God loves you, your life will never be the same. It’s just not possible. “And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is. May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God (Ephesians 3:18-19 NLT).
“God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure” (Ephesians 1:5 NLT). The key words there are “in advance.” Before you were born, before creation, He knew you. He loved you. He wanted you to be his.
God is timeless, omnipresent. He is all-knowing, omniscient. He is all-powerful, able to create anything, omnipotent. There is nothing that escapes him, ever. He knew everything you would do, every thought you would have, every word that would ever utter, and he still wanted you.
Think about that. Let it sink in. He knew EVERYTHING in advance and loved you so much that he wanted you in His world even though he knew everything.
“Can anything ever separate us from Christ’s love? Does it mean he no longer loves us if we have trouble or calamity, or are persecuted, or hungry, or destitute, or in danger, or threatened with death? No, despite all these things, overwhelming victory is ours through Christ, who loved us. And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 8:35, 37-39 NLT).
Talk about much more precious than gold!
If you struggle with trying to understand God’s love for you, I encourage you to copy down these verses and meditate on them. You will find something much more precious than gold.
