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The Wonders

             Praise be to the Lord, for he showed me the wonders of his love when I was in a city under siege. In my alarm I said, “I am cut off from your sight!” Yet you heard my cry for mercy when I called to you for help. (Psalm 31:21-22)

But the king replied to Araunah, “No, I insist on paying you for it. I will not sacrifice to the Lord my God burnt offerings that cost me nothing.” So David bought the threshing floor and the oxen and paid fifty shekels of silver for them. (II Samuel 24:24)

 

Strange question time. When do you most notice others showing or giving you love? Is it on the days when everything goes well, there are no fires to put out, no one screaming at you, and no one cutting you off in traffic? Or is it when you’ve had a day you wouldn’t wish on an enemy, and people have lined up to get on your last nerve? Why are we fond of stories in which – at significant risk – the hero/heroine swoops in to demonstrate his/her love in some dramatic way? Why are our favorite stories not those in which the lover makes two PBJ sandwiches and discusses the day the beloved spent running a cash register at a grocery store?

I suspect part of the answer can be found in what David said to Araunah. We recognize love most when we understand how much that love costs the lover or when we understand how desperately we need it. We don’t notice love when we only need $.15 worth, but when we need $15,000 worth, we notice. And we notice when we get it. And we need to be reminded of that when our universe shrinks to the size and shape of our source of pain, fear, or anger.

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