Hope-filled love

My lovely mum had a fall last week and has been in hospital and I’ve been thinking about how much of an influence she has been on my life. Often, if someone says I have said something wise, it is only because mum said it to me first!

One line that she regularly repeated throughout my childhood, sometimes to my annoyance, was this – “Love believes the best”.

Of course, strictly speaking the apostle Paul gets the credit for this in 1 Corinthians 13.7, but Mum gets points for continually applying it.

It changes us when we realise this is true of God’s love for us. His love isn’t only, “I love you just as you ” – it is a love that says, “I’m full of joy over what you can be!” So many people think God’s predominant emotion over them is disappointment. What if instead, God sees you and me with hope? He doesn’t look at us and think, what a waste of time that was. God believes in what we can be in Christ.

Take a moment to ask God how he sees you.

That hope-filled love is how we are called to love each other, calling out the best in each other, giving each other a new start. As autumn leaves fall, so we can allow the old to fall away for the new, trusting for the new growth that will come.

We all need this, but I’ve especially seen the power of God’s transforming love in prison. On our final Alpha session, we had a moving moment when two of the team sung over us, that God says we are loved and held and have a future. At the end, one woman shared how she had grown up feeling absolutely no-one loved her.  She described how one of the group offered her some crisps when she first arrived and she thought they were after something. Now, she knows she is loved.  

Is there anyone that God is calling you to see in a new way with hope-filled love?

Of course, alarm bells may ring – what about the person who continually lets you down? Jesus was open-eyed about the betrayal coming his way from his friends and we aren’t supposed to be naïve. When Jesus says, “Love your neighbour as yourself, there is a reminder that sometimes we must exercise the self-love which means putting boundaries in place if relationships are damaging.

But more often, the danger is we write others off, carry grudges and believe the worst, rather than the best. My mum’s other repeated phrase that rings in my ears is that “love covers over a multitude of sins” (1 Peter 4:8). That’s the love God has for us.

The love of God is infused with mercy and hope. May you know it waits for you today, covering your sins and believing the best of you.