I’m thankful that God is love. Out of his love, God saves sacrificially, giving up his own Son, and his sacrificial giving is done, not for those who are in some way giving back to him, or even neutral toward him, but for those who are rejecting him. God’s love is the kind of love that rescues the unlovely and unworthy at great cost. That’s mind-boggling love, infinite love, immeasurable love, love that is “great to the heavens,” and I’m so thankful for it. If God weren’t a loving God, I’d be in deep doo-doo.
That God loves me is my security; I can rest in his love.
Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will trouble, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written, “For your sake we encounter death all day long; we were considered as sheep to be slaughtered.” No, in all these things we have complete victory through him who loved us! For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor heavenly rulers, nor things that are present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:35-39)
If God did not spare the Son he loved because of his love for us, we know that his love is the sort of love we can count on to give us everything else that we need. God’s love for me has already cost him his own Son; he will not give up on me now. There is nothing—no person or power or circumstance—that can take God’s love from me. And that’s something to be thankful for.
I’m also thankful for God’s providential care, which also comes from his love. Here are a few of his providential gifts to me this week: