Now that we’ve been broken into pieces by sin and put back together by “the (amazing) grace of the Master, Jesus Christ,” we’re better prepared to adequately understand and experience “the (extravagant) love of God the Father.”
Oh, we’ve heard about the love of God since we were youngsters in Sunday School. I still remember singing “Jesus loves me, this I know for the Bible tells me so.”
But Paul intentionally elevates the language in his letter to the Corinthians forcing us to wrestle with “the (extravagant) love of God the Father.”
An elementary school teacher who was a member of my Metter (Ga.) Methodist Church emailed me a story not long ago with an example of “the extravagant love of God.”
The elderly man was standing at the door of the doctor’s office when it opened one morning and walked briskly into the waiting room explaining it was time for the stitches in his right thumb to be removed. The nurse took him into a treatment room, checked his vital signs, and told him the doctor had a busy patient load already, and it’d be at least an hour before he could get away to check his stitches to see if they could be taken out.
The man looked anxiously at his watch and explained he had an important appointment across town in 30 minutes. So, the young nurse took the bandages off, saw the wound was completely healed, and offered to remove the stitches herself.
After talking with the doctor, she gathered up her surgical scissors and tweezers. As she worked on his hand, they began to talk.
She asked him about the appointment coming up. The man smiled softly and replied, “Well, every morning at 9 o’clock, I have to be at the local nursing home to eat breakfast with my wife.”
The nurse paused, touched by his devotion and asked, “Is she doing alright? Will she be upset or worried if you happen to be a few minutes?”
The man looked down and said, 'No, she won't be worried. My wife suffers from advanced Alzheimer’s disease. She hasn’t known who I am or recognized my face for more than five years.”
The nurse stopped and stared at him with amazement, “And you still walk through those doors every single morning to sit and eat breakfast with her, even though she has absolutely no idea who you are?'
The old man reached out, patted her hand, and said with a twinkle in his eye, 'She might not know who I am, but I still know who she is.”
As the man gathered his coat and left, tears welled up in the nurse’s eyes. She stood alone in the treatment room and whispered to nobody in particular, “That’s the kind of love I want in my life.”
The Bible calls it “agape love” and it asks two questions, “What do you need? And can I get it for you?”
Charles “Buddy” Whatley is a retired United Methodist pastor serving Dawson Street Methodist Church in Thomasville, Ga. With wife, Mary Ella, they are missionaries to the Navajo Reservation.
