Loved.

Day Three

Loved.

There was a silence when we began. 

The quiet rise and fall of lungs filling with air, the whispered hush of a breath drawn in and a breath exhaled.

But before this silence, there was something else.  

Before the silence in the creation of us, there was poetry and song in the pondering of us. 

We didn’t begin with a loud bang. We didn’t begin with a “Let there be- and it was so”. We didn’t begin with words at all. 

We began with mud. 

And breath.

And a song, deep in the heart of God.

‘So God created mankind in his own image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.’ 

Genesis 1:27

When God created human beings a lyrical lilt entered the text and the lines became a poem, a song, a melody woven in light. Here in Genesis 1:27, at the genesis of us we have the first example of poetry in the Bible known as ‘poetic parallelism’ woven with heightened speech and poetic diction². 

Against the canvas of all the patterned repetition of the creation of everything else on earth, this poetry speaks. 

We were created differently. 

To be different. 

Like Him. 

God found no words to describe us into being. It was the song in His heart that became the reality of us, the melody that guided His hands as He worked, the music within Him that spilled over into the mud. Into us. 

It was personal. To Him. He was close.

As close as He intended to stay. With us. Always. 

As close as He intended us to be. With Him. Always.

There was an intimacy in the beginning of us. A calling to closeness. An invitation to connection. We didn’t begin with a loud bang. 

We began with the closeness of God.

From the beginning to the end, this is the story of the Bible, God drawing near to humankind. God with us. That was always His plan. The love of us. Our love of Him. Close. As close as breath. 

That was the song in His heart that day. The song He spilled into the sinews of us. A love song. The song He sang over us in this garden long ago. 

We weren’t just breathed into being. We were loved into being. And we truly love because we were first loved. By Him. 

“We love because he first loved us”

1 John 4:19

Our story, the human story, the story we were created for and formed to live within, has always been a love story, a story of community and connection. A love story written for us from before all time began.

In the garden, at the beginning of our human story, the beginning of all our beginnings, love was everywhere. All the abundant gifts of God spoke abundantly of God’s abundant love. There was no lack of love because there was no lack of God. 

But in all the lavish goodness, there was just one thing that was not good.

‘The Lord God said, ‘It is not good for the man to be alone.’

Genesis 2:18

The animals were not enough (Genesis 2:19-20) and not even communion with God alone was enough. God wanted human community and connection for His children. He wanted for us what He always had.

Breathed into life by Love, we are our Father’s children. God is love (1 John 4:8). It’s the way He is. It’s who He is. We were created in love, by Love, for love. It’s the way we are. It’s who we are. 

No matter how strong, self sufficient and independent we like to think we are, every human being needs community to thrive as a human being. We need love. We need each other. We need God. Without all these threads woven together into the human ecosystem we fall, with nothing underneath to catch us.

It was not good for the first human beings to be alone. So in love, God gave us one another.

“So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs and then closed up the place with flesh. hen the Lord God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.

The man said,

“This is now bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh;
she shall be called ‘woman,’
for she was taken out of man.”

That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh.” 

Genesis 2:21-24

Love is not a human fad, a childhood fairytale, a whimsical past-time, a giggly game teenagers play, and it is not something that can be replaced or produced by social media. Human connection and community is a human requirement for life, as essential as the air we breath. 

It was not good for humankind to be alone in the beginning of all things and it still isn’t today. But love is sometimes easier said than done, and sometimes loving leaves us un-done.

So the day I’m doing my final edit for this writing, this writing you are reading right now, as I’m weaving words on paper all about love, connection and community and how loved we are by God, I’m sitting in my kitchen, trying to think, trying to gather the worn threads of my mind together as overwhelming mayhem frays the edges of my soul. 

My kids are cooking dinner. And all around me there’s this layering clanging chaos, as my son cuts onions too close to his thumb, my daughter grates cheese on both the bench and the floor, our house guest cooks food while dodging in and out of children, as his daughters (aged two and four) dance unsupervised around the kitchen. My husband has had a headache for two days now, my daughter is pouting, reluctant to cook, and then my son forgets to check the macaroni and it burns itself dry, gluing globs of burned gloop to the base of the pan. And no amount of scraping is getting that macaroni off that pan. And no amount of biting my lip is gonna get me through this moment. And my mum was a whole spinning planet away and I wish she was here right now.

So, feeling overwhelmed, I slip upstairs to find space to breathe. I sit sullen in the corner of the verandah.  And I count all the ways it is all too much, living far from family, far from home, with biting lip fears of all this pandemic means, with struggling friends leaning on us and developing world stresses wearing on us. I feel thin and worn out and empty. “It’s too much”, I whisper to the evening breeze, “I don’t have enough”. Not enough patience, not enough kindness, not enough support, not enough energy. Not enough love. Not enough. 

The sun is slipping below the horizon spreading pink across the sky. An American Kestral alights on the telegraph wire and silhouettes against all the rosie pink. The breeze dances gently all round. 

“Is my love enough?” I sense God reply, whispering into the stillness of my heart, with the gentle stillness of His still small voice, “Is My love enough?”.  And I feel Him smiling strength back into my soul, breathing life back into my bones. And I breathe in, long and deep and slow. And I know it is. Enough. “Let go of all you are trying to do and hold onto Me” He whispers, “then do everything through Me. Your reservoirs are not enough. Mine are endless”.

Endless love. Like an ocean right there, filling, fuelling, reviving, restoring. 

Because the truth is, we alone don’t have what it takes to really love each other. But He does. We can’t sustain ourselves in the given-ness and grace that real love requires. But He can.

I return downstairs strangely revived and hug my daughter and look her in the eyes, my husband is helping the kids stir the sauce in the pot and I begin to scrub the macaroni off the pan before finding the lettuce for my son to chop. And this room that just a moment ago was all chaos and fragmentation, is now woven in light and laughter and all the glorious messiness of life lived in community. Together. With Him. With Him in whom there is always enough. 

And this is the strange reality that feels as magical as a fairy tale but is actually a tried and trustworthy truth; I don’t have the resources to sustain all that real love requires. But He does. And the more I love through Him, the more that love spills out on all around me. And I begin to see. I see My daughter of thirteen lean low and share a joke with our small house guests. I see my son of ten courageously prepare a salad for them and us (without severing his thumb off in the process). I see my tired husband find another gear and make all the children laugh around the dinner table.

I see all this around me and feel the change within me, and this realisation grows in my mind and my heart; when God became my enough, quietly He spilled over everywhere to become theirs too, His love splashing everywhere all around on everyone. I guess that’s what oceans are: drenching, uncontainable. Endless.

‘We love because He first loves us’(1 John 4:19): It’s not a religious concept, a Sunday school memory verse, or a theological ideology; Love is a life lived with Him, through Him, in the complex messy reality of human community. 

We are only ourselves, whole and alive, when we let the unfathomable unending love of God sink in beneath our skin, pumping through our veins, through to our beating heart. This love and only this love releases, restores and renews us, flourishing us, enabling us to thrive, giving us the strength to keep on loving when all our other resources run out. 

When the human family breaks down, when our biological family breaks down, when the worn out threads of our own human heart breaks down, God’s love doesn’t break down, doesn’t wear out, doesn’t give up. It’s endless, vaster than the ocean, deeper than the watery depths, wider than a universe of light. 

Our human story has always been a love story. A Love that began us and a Love that revives us.

We didn’t begin with a loud bang. We didn’t begin with a “Let there be- and it was so”. We didn’t begin with words at all. 

We began with mud. 

And breath.

And a song of love, deep in the heart of God. 

‘This is how God showed his love among us: he sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.’ 

1 John 4:9-11

And It is here, now, during this Easter season, as we keep Jesus company on His long walk to the cross that we begin to remember, finally begin to comprehend, the true depth of love God has for us.

Endless.

Journey Further

‘We love because He first loves us’ 1 John 4:19

How would your love for others be strengthened if you more fully allowed yourself to live in the reality of God’s love for you?

References,Notes and Credits

¹ Genesis 1:11,12,21,24,25 uses the phrase ‘according to its own kind’ ten times preceding the creation of all living organisms except for human beings. 

² C. John Collins, ‘Genesis 1-4: A Linguistic, Literary And Theological Commentary’.

³“Strong’s Definitions” Dr. James Strong,1890.   “אֱלֹהִים ʼĕlôhîym, el-o-heem’; plural of H433

⁴ Thomas Merton, ‘A Book of Hours’

⁵ Sue Gerhardt, ‘Why Love Matters: How Affection Shapes a Baby’s Brain’ Routledge, 2004

⁶ 1 National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2020. Social Isolation and Loneliness in Older Adults: Opportunities for the Health Care System. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.

⁷‘The Selfish Society’, By Sue Gerhardt, Simon and Schuster  2010

All photos were taken by Liz Campbell except for the two of three figures silhouetted against the sunset. These were taken by Dan Evenhuis.