God's Love

             The earth is filled with your love, Lord; teach me your decrees. (Psalm 119:64)

             Yesterday, we considered why we love God. Today’s verse from Biblegateway.com turns the tables. God’s love fills the world. As we look around the world, two uncomfortable questions come to mind:

            Is this what love looks like? The place is a mess!

          The place is a mess! Why should God love it?

          This is an old problem. If God is good and omnipotent, why is there suffering or evil? The fact that there is suffering and evil means that God is not good, or not omnipotent, or neither. If He loved us, He’d make everything just the way we think it should be. And, as noted yesterday, part of how it should be may well involve our being able to hold our heads up and meet with Him as equals. Why wouldn’t He want us to be His equals?

          Whether or not He might want to, He can’t. When we say God can do all things, we’re talking about things that can be done. If He created us as His equal, we would be nothing more (or less) than part of Him. How does one create more of what is already all?  And it really doesn’t matter how much “less” we are. We would still claim it was evidence of God not loving us as He should.

          When someone has a child, is it a sign that the parent doesn’t love the child if the parent doesn’t treat the child as an equal? Does the parent fail to love the child if the parent withholds something until the child learns to crawl or walk over to take it – or until the child can understand and use it responsibly? Most of us would say it’s not unloving, but the children experiencing the “deprivation” are likely to think it is.

          As I think about today’s verse, one of my current obsessions comes to mind. When COVID-19 hit, I went into an “I’m not prepared for emergencies” mode. I knew there were plants in my yard that I could eat if everything fell apart, and started learning about some of them. There are nearly 400,000 species of plants in the world. Half to three-quarters of them are edible by humans, but we eat about 200 of them, and three (3!) account for more than half of our caloric intake of plants (Wheat, rice & corn.) In fact, one of the plants that isn’t really useful to us is one that we seem to think we absolutely must make as the primary plant in our yards: grass.

          George Washington Carver explored at least 300 ways to use peanut plants. What would happen if we explored other plants with as much interest? As a small example, do you know that you can make a coffee substitute, a noodle substitute, a honey substitute, and a spinach substitute out of a dandelion? Have you tried dandelion tea? Dandelion blossom muffins or bread? Dandelion wine? Without going into medicinal uses and referring only to human use of the plant, I’m only scratching the surface of what the humble dandelion can do for us. That’s just one plant of the 400,000. A boy might think he was really loved if he were given one of those knives with all those other tools, too. It’s just one example of how much good is stuffed into the world for our benefit. Yes, the world is full of God’s love if we only bother to open our eyes and see.