God Loves You So Much
Composer/musician Dan Schutte reminds us that God’s love for us is a free gift that cannot be stopped by any difficulty or sin. He encourages us to respond by saying, “Here I am, Lord.” But the first step is simply to accept the love that God shows us in Jesus. Receive his love today.
Have you ever heard the song “Here I Am, Lord”? (“Is it I, Lord? I have heard you calling in the night.”)
Last Sunday, I had the joy of participating in a concert/singalong led by the author of that song. Composer and musician Dan Schutte led a gathering of more than 500 people in singing some of his old standards as well as newer material.
“Here I Am, Lord” has crossed denominational divisions and can be found in hymnals used in Catholic, Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, Covenant, Evangelical Lutheran, and other churches. Schutte is a Catholic, but his songs convey Christian truths that believers of all stripes can respond to because they are deeply grounded in the Bible.
The report-card God or the God of love?
Schutte talked about the background of some of his songs. In introducing the song “Though the Mountains May Fall,” he told us about his childhood image of God as “the great report-card God” – an image not unlike my own childhood experience. It was a loving God, Schutte said, but a God focused on judging your performance.
As he grew older, he came to understand God differently. He explained it this way: “If we want to know who God is, we look to Jesus of Nazareth, a God who literally loves us to death. There is nothing you or I can do to win God’s love or earn God’s love. It is simply a gift.”
The Old Testament tells us about God’s love
Some people see this “report-card God” in the Old Testament, but Schutte wrote several songs whose lyrics draw from Old Testament passages that speak of God’s love for us, including “Though the Mountains May Fall.” In the Book of Isaiah, God says:
Though the mountains fall away
and the hills be shaken,
My love shall never fall away from you
nor my covenant of peace be shaken,
says the Lord, who has mercy on you. (Is. 54:10, NABRE)
In Isaiah, God also says:
Can a mother forget her infant,
be without tenderness for the child of her womb?
Even should she forget,
I will never forget you.
See, upon the palms of my hands I have engraved you. (Is. 49:15-16a)
The Psalms also speak of God’s love:
The Lord is merciful and gracious,
slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. (Ps. 103:8, NRSV and ESV)
David turns this into a prayer:
But you, O Lord, are a God merciful and gracious,
slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. (Ps. 86:15, NRSV and ESV)
Furthermore, this concept of a loving God extends back all the way to Moses’s encounters with God on the mountain in the desert, where God proclaims:
The Lord, the Lord, a God gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in love and fidelity, continuing his love for a thousand generations, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion, and sin. (Ex. 34:6-7a, NABRE)
Jesus proclaims and embodies God’s love more clearly, but there is not a sharp divide between an Old Testament God of judgment and a New Testament God of love. What we find in the Old Testament is a gradually developing understanding of the steadfast love of God.
What is your image of God? Can you accept God’s love?
What does this say to you? Do you have a “report-card God” image of God? Do find it hard to relax in his presence? Do you find yourself trying to find ways to show that you are worthy of God’s love?
Listen again to Dan Schutte: “There is nothing you or I can do to win God’s love or earn God’s love. It is simply a gift.”
The love arises from God – not because of anything you do, but simply because of who God is. God came to Earth in the person of Jesus to show us his love, and he maintained that love all the way to death on a cross designed for exquisite torture.
That love continues even when you fail or fall short or mess up. God loves you to death and beyond – not because you deserve it, but because that’s just the way he is.
The real God is always near
The “report-card God” is a faraway God, looking down from on high. Jesus is a God who stands at your side to guide you every step of your way. And that image of God, also, is in the Old Testament. In another of his songs, “You Are Near,” Schutte sings of the God who is “standing always at my side” to “lead me in ways everlasting.” As Psalm 139 says,
Lord, you have searched me and known me.
You know when I sit down and when I rise up....
Even before a word is on my tongue,
O Lord, you know it completely.
If I take the wings of the morning
and settle at the farthest limits of the sea,
even there your hand shall lead me,
and your right hand shall hold me fast. (Ps. 139:1-2a, 4, 9-10)
You are never alone, never separated from the love of God.
God hopes that our response will be “Here I am” (1 Sam. 3:1-10), when he asks us to love others with the same love he has for us. But first we need to accept the love he offers.
The Old Testament tells us that God loves us. In Jesus, we fully see what God’s love looks like. Relax, receive the love God offers, and let it permeate your life.
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