Is it Seen?

“Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?”

And He said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.  This is the great and foremost commandment.  The second is like it, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”  Matthew 22:36-39

My most recent readings in Packer’s Knowing God have really challenged and broadened my perspective on the love of God.  Some of Packer’s thoughts reinforce, solidify, and clarify what has been growing in my own heart and mind.  Others, however, are very novel to me, driving me to want to study them more. 

But, this morning’s reading was nothing novel or fantastic to my mind.  It was simply challenging.  At the closing of a very powerful chapter (which I have been reading for quite some time) on the love of God, Packer asks this question, “Could an observer learn from the quality and degree of love that I show to others – my wife? my husband? my family? my neighbors? people at church? people at work? – anything at all about the greatness of God’s love to me? 

Wow.  I don’t think I can answer that question positively.  I cannot see how my actions toward others could ever truly express even one tiny morsel of the magnitude of God’s love for me.  His love for me made me an adopted heir to His eternal kingdom through the sacrifice of His one and only natural Son.  How can I begin to express His love for me through my actions toward others when my actions are so immersed in selfishness?

It is my prayer that by some miracle an observer could catch a glimpse of the love of God through something I do.  And, it is my challenge that my actions become more greatly reflective of God’s love each and every day that I live.