Image courtesy of Goodreads.com
Love You Forever by Robert Munsch, always brings tears to my eyes as I read it.
My tears come from my own life journey. Munsch’s stories always present a touch of the absurd. In Love You Forever mother crawls across the floor to her sleeping grown son and cradles him on her knee in a rocking chair. There is truth in Munsch’s picture of a mom’s unconditional love. A parent’s love is stretched at times, but usually we continue to cuddle our children close to our hearts. Some children stretch parent’s love to breaking and beyond. Still the pull of parental love is so strong that we find ourselves still willing to pick up our broken child and sing, “I’ll love you forever. I’ll love you for always. As long as I’m living my baby you’ll be.”
I believe Robert Munsch has captured the unconditional love God has for each and every one of us. We cannot imagine how any divine being could love individually every one of the billions of people on earth. Even that mystery pales beside God’s unconditional love for me when God knows my every thought and action. But that is what Jesus taught. God has promised to love us forever through all our mistakes and failures.
During 2021 I know I will disappoint God. I will fail to care for God’s beautiful creation, do stupid things, make poor choices. At those times I will need Munsch’s illustration of God crawling across the floor, picking up my sleeping form, rocking and singing, “I’ll love you forever. I’ll love you for always.”
As humans, that kind of unconditional love is our goal. When we achieve it our world glows with the beauty of one human being holding another. My goal for 2021 is to continue loving – a smile for a tired clerk, money for a beggar on the street, listening to a troubled friend and more. When I fail, I will ask forgiveness. Pick myself up and start again. This is the kind of loving I can do. I challenge you to do the same. Let’s work with God to create a world filled with light in 2021.
Today’s Faith by Rev. Janet Stobie
