(I’ve been primarily posting at my other site. Megan asked me to post this one here too. At her request, . . . .)

Yes, it is Tuesday and that means it’s book day at Lelia’s.
First, though, I must apologize for wigging out on it last week.
Honestly, I read it but didn’t have time to do much more than come
home, feed the cats, go to my second job, sleep, and do it all over
again the next day. That’s my excuse, but I’ve got time tonight.

Flaws.
I’ve got them. I’m heavier than I would like to be. I struggle with
depression. I can be snappish and mean at times. I get caught up in
everything going on with me. You get the picture. There are a few
things that might make me seem a bit unloveable and definitely
unacceptable.

Lisa writes, “The
depth of God’s love for us is hard to comprehend. So are the height,
the width, and the breadth of His love. our human minds will not allow
us to process the greatness of the love of our Father because we are
programmed by the world’s view of love, which has great limitations.” Limitations.
Isn’t that the truth? The world says, “I’ll love you if . . . .” God
says, “I’ll love you in spite of . . . . I’ll love you when you shine
and I’ll love you when you’re down. I’ll love you all the way around
the world, to the moon and back again. I cannot love you less.”

The
truly amazing thing about God’s love is that He does love in spite of.
He knows all of my flaws and failures. J. I. Packer writes in Knowing God:

.
. . There is tremendous relief in knowing that His to me is utterly
realistic, based at every point on a prior knowledge of the worst about
me, so that no discovery now can disillusion him about me, in the way I
am so often disillusioned about myself, and quench His determination to
bless me.

God’s love is utterly realistic. Because of that, I can find great comfort. God loves me in spite of knowing the worst about me.

But He also is always inviting me to grow.

The
hard part, I think, is that in knowing this fact, God also expects me
to try to love others in the same way. This is a growth point for me.
Can I love you if you snub me? Can I love you when you hurt my
feelings? Can I love you when you let me down?

Asking those
questions are convicting. It makes me think of a couple of people at
church I’ve kind of written off because I felt like the friendship was
more important to me than to them. And they let me down one to many
times. But maybe God is calling me to go back and love them, accept
them, flaws and all.

And it that, I may pass on hope.