Christian, the Lord knows you are not an asset to the organization. He knows what a tangled-up knot of anxiety, incompetence, and faithlessness you are. He knows exactly what a big fat sinner you are. He knew exactly what he was getting into. Eyes wide open, and arms too, he comes to embrace you. He’s not playing the angles, calculating the risks, hedging his bets. Nothing is a risk to the Lord who sovereingly upholds the universe, anyway.

Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

— 1 Corinthians 13:7

Love is fulfillment by way of emptiness. It would not seem to work that way. This is why nearly every worldly notion of love—and even some churchy notions of love—try to get at the fulfillment by way of filling. We want our eyes filled with sex, our ears filled with platitudes, our bellies filled with morsels, our minds filled with daydreams.

And then there is the way of Jesus. The Lord of the Universe who, not desiring to exploit his deity, empties himself. Obeys even in the personal famine of the desert. Commits even in the darkness of the garden.

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