I want to know what love is

In 1984 Foreigner asked, “I want to know what love is.”  In 1995, John Elefante replied:

Endless days and long hard journeys,
Mending hearts forever yearning,
This is what love is.
Healing blind men by his touch,
Knowing that he cares so much,
This is what love is.
And teaching us to love each other as we love ourselves,
And laying down our lives for someone else,

And even when we fall, he loves us through it all,
His gentle guiding hand keeps understanding.
He knows the tears we cry.
He knows our hearts may lie.
For us again, he'd die.
That's what love is.[1]

While I admit I’m biased, I can’t think of a better example of love than the Christian God.  Here we have a being who, despite being ridiculed, rejected, misquoted, misunderstood and outright ignored, continues to reach out to us.  What wondrous love is this?

Here we stand, rebels before a holy God and not realize the extent of our offenses.  We look at each other and think, “I’m not that bad, I’m just like most other people,” yet we don’t understand that we are not being graded on a curve but against absolute righteousness.  And yet, this God would offer us pardon, restoration and renewal.  What wondrous love is this?

Here we are, living our lives as we think is best yet making a mess of it.  Unintentional hurts, unplanned events and uninformed decisions result in unsatisfying results, depression, anger and resentment.  And God offers to clean it up, put it back together and, take all these bad things and somehow, miraculously, bring something good out of it. What wondrous love is this?

Does this sound too good to be true?  It is easy to write all these things.  How do we know it is true?  Where is the evidence?  Who gave the testimony?  I am persuaded that this reflects reality.

God wrote it in history.

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[1] John Elefante "This Is What Love Is" © 1995