What Wondrous Love

There’s an apocryphal story about traveling salesman who spent much of his time on the road battling loneliness. One year his daughter gave him a little gift to help with his homesickness. It had black beady eyes, a red bow tie and orange feet. It was a stuffed penguin that stood about five inches tall. Attached to its left wing was a cardboard sign bearing the hand-painted declaration, “I Love My Daddy!”

The salesman of course, granted it a place of honor on the dresser in whichever hotel room he happened to be staying in. Later when he was going through customs in New York, a customs agent pulled the penguin out of the man’s suitcase. Holding it up, he said, “It’s a good thing we don’t charge a tax on love. Or you sir, would owe a bundle!”

When we think about God’s love for us in Christ, it really is a good thing that there is no tax on love…  because we could never pay.

In the first letter of John we read… “We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us…”  And then he adds, “and we ought to lay down our lives for one another… Little children, let us love not in word or in speech, but in truth and action.” (1 John 3:16,18)

Friend of Dial Hope, I pray today that you would know God’s love for you in the very fiber of your being. And, may you find ways to share that love with a world desperately in need.

Let us pray: Help us, O God, to accept the forgiveness, grace and love that you have first offered us. May that love then in turn overflow from our very lives; in Jesus name. Amen.