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“And when I passed by you and saw you wallowing in your blood, I said to you in your blood, ‘Live!’ I said to you in your blood, ‘Live!’
Ezekiel 16:6
This is a picture from the delivery room, a scene of blood and birth, which our Father is using to describe His love. In this passage God’s people are described as a newborn abandoned in a field, despised by its mother. How can this express His love? There is nothing really attractive about birth. It is a fairly gruesome event. This birth is even worse. However, our Father is talking about the way He loves us without any conditions. We were not his children naturally, and He chooses to love us even as He sees where we begin in it all. The poet Herbert wrote, “I was born crying, and every day shows why.” This is us, born into the world’s misery and ugliness. We are not beautiful. But He sees all that, and He loves us. It is this love that began before the world was made, for in His love he chose us before time was time.
He loved, and he loves today. So often in our squalor and guilt, we feel helpless. This is what the doctrine of election, of God’s choice, is for – it is to give hope to us. If I was loved this way, and chosen this way, I have so much to hope for in His love. I can be bold; I can come to the Father, I can trust in His love. When the Father loves, nothing and no one shall defeat it. Let us come, full of repentance and faith today, remembering that the Father looked on us and saw the whole truth of who we were. And then He decided to set His love on us. How great is His grace!