The Condition on Love

This conversation is more of a monologue for one of my daughters. God teaches us things in ways that we understand. My geeky logical brain simply can't comprehend things without reason. That's what unconditional always meant to me - for no reason. So God explained it a different way. And I desperately wanted to share it with someone special...

The Letter

You know, it’s kind of weird how much of myself that I see in you. That’s not all bad. Well, from my point of view it’s not all bad. You may think differently :) I can see that you get frustrated with school. I’m guessing that you feel lonely a lot. Don’t know how to tell anyone. And feel like no one would understand. You feel good around your friends. But it fades quickly when you get home. You want that good feeling all of the time. I felt the same way at your age. I see you doing the same things I did. Honestly, I still don’t have the answers. I have no idea how to talk to you about this. So I wrote a letter instead. All I can tell you is that I love you. You probably don’t believe me. That’s okay. We kid around that I have to love you, I’m your dad. Being serious for a moment, that’s not why I love you. Being your father was a good opportunity to know you. I get to spend a lot of time around you. I watched you grow up. Being your dad provided those opportunities. In church, they talk a lot about God’s unconditional love. I never really understood that. Your parents love you because they’re your parents. Your friends because you share common interests. To get married, you have to date - which is pretty much just tryouts. Someone marries you because of how you act while dating. There aren’t any real models of unconditional love. I realized recently that there is one condition on God’s love - He loves us because we exist. In the Old Testament, God tells Moses that His name is “I am”. God declared His existence. God is God because “I am”. He exists. He is real, He is a person, “I am”. God created us in His image. He sees Himself as “I am”. He sees you as “you are”. He exists. You exist. And that is enough for Him to love you. At the end of Romans 8, Paul says “I am convinced that nothing can separate us from the love of God - height, depth, the government, demons, nothing.” Paul can say that because he understood why God loves us - we exist. Nothing can change the fact that we exist. Nothing, no one. You exist, so God loves you. I love you for the same reason. I love you because you exist. And until that changes, well, I love you.