Love like water

One of my friends thinks I am a bit bi-polar. I don't know about that, but I was feeling as low as low gets a few mornings before Christmas. My love tank was empty and needed filling. I knew that only God could fill it, and as I was taking my daily walk through the cemetery it occurred to me that I couldn't think of a single verse off the top of my head that says God loves me!

I thought of John 3:16, but the wording is "God so loved the world." I complained to the Lord that I wanted something more personal. It's not that I thought his love for the world got diluted by the time it was divvied up 7 billion ways, but I needed something more intimate at the moment.

My mind wandered to all the homeless people and people on the margins of society-those disheveled figures you see walking aimlessly along the littered lots on Philadelphia streets. I suddenly was imbued with a certainty that if they had someone to just come up to them and put their arms around them and say, "I love you and I'm not going anywhere," they wouldn't need any psychologist, or program, or institution.

I got home and went about my business. Someone had given me a book about a man named Norman Grubb so I started reading. It turns out that his life verse was this:

"I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me" (Galatians 2:20).

I had by this time forgotten all about my complaint and request, and the fact that in the morning I was not able to come up with a verse that says God loves me.

When I read those words in Galatians, the effect on me was like the effect when my daughter says, "I love you." It was very physical-like a wilted plant on the point of death, onto which a cup of water is poured, and the water travels up the roots, and then the stem, and then the leaves of the plant. And it revives.

Love is like water. Drink it. Give it.