Great Love

Today I was staring at myself in the mirror. Largely pregnant, whale like, I watched as the two little mysterious people made ripples on the stretched skin of my stomach. And I was reminded of a verse from Psalms, familiar to many church raised people, about how I was knit together by the great hands of God. Normally that is nothing more than a fleeting thought for me. A passage I have heard many times and whose significance was largely lost on me. But this morning I thought about it a little more. I don’t know the children who are occupying A LOT of space inside me, I have no ideas what they look like, what they sound like, who they will become. I love them in a slightly disassociated way, I can’t truly love them until I know them. And I greatly disagree when people comment on the children my husband and I have made. We didn’t make anything. There is no parent craft hour where we piece together our children. I am a giant incubator. I am the vessel in which miraculous things happen. My children may share traits with my husband and I but they were created, formed, knit together with abundant love by my God. And God has loved them and cared for them and created them with far more intensity and greatness than I could ever achieve with the best intentions. What struck me this morning was how often God does this, how every single person was created with a love so deep that it is unfathomable in our human minds. God laboured and planned and pieced together the people who hate Him, denounce Him, work to disprove His existance, persecute Him, break His heart. Every minute of every day, one if His precious and loved creations takes His great love and trample it beneath their feet like nothing more than garbage. And yet He still loves, He still pours Himself into every single person He knits together. A love greater than the most caring and well intentioned parents will ever be able to show the child they call their own. My God made me, knew me, knew the story of my life, became a man for me, died for me, loves me enough to cover my sins. How sad it was to me this morning to think how His creation has so greatly betrayed His love. Great love. I will never be the parent God is, I will never love with that depth, I will never be worthy of the greatness of that love. I pray my children will choose to live in that love, that they will honour that love, recognise the greatness of the love that created and will uphold them. How humbled I am to be a vessel to carry that greatness, that love. May I always know the true order of the love my children have been gifted with, for His love came first.