Ever wind up with mantras from certain seasons of your life?
4 months into living overseas, I realized that I did not really trust God with my desires, with my heart or my happiness. I did not really believe that He was good. Or that He would provide for me. And I didn't understand the way He loved me.
So I started to tell myself that He was good. And that He would provide. And that He LOVED me. Every day. Usually a couple times a day. Whenever I had thoughts that represented my disbelief in those truths.
And it became my mantra. My team and my disciples all knew it was my theme - through most every prayer, through every word of encouragement, every entry in my journal.
God taught me more in those two years about His goodness toward me and His faithfulness to me and His crazy love over me that in all my 19 years as a believer before.
I figured "God is good. He will provide. He REALLY loves me." would make rather long and awkward tattoo, even though, if I were to ever get something permanently drawn on my body - a reminder of those things would never be looked upon with regret. I tried to brainstorm ways to shorten or abbreviate it, a symbol to represent it, or artistic ways to weave all the words together. In the end, I decided to put a tattoo on hold because it would've been a bit of a stumbling block to my best Chinese friend.
But last week, I was reading the prologue of John and then some commentaries about it. (Did you know that John 1:1-18 is a chiasm and it's climax is verse 12: "Yet to all who received him, to those who believed on his name, he gave the right to become children of God"? I wouldn't have picked that out as the climax, but it is pretty dang awesome that we can become children of God.) Anyway, in verse 14 John describes Jesus as being "full of grace and truth" and the commentary pointed me to an Old Testament counterpart of that couplet that first shows up in Exodus 34:6-7 ~ probably one of the most beautiful passages EVER about Jehovah God (indeed, He did say it Himself :-D):
"The LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin..."
The Hebrew for love and faithfulness is hesed we'emet and it shows up several times in the OT (Jos 2:14; 2 Sam 2:6, 15:20; Pss 25:10, 61:7, 84:11, 85:10; 89:14...the Psalms are my favorites). The commentary says "The 'love and faithfulness' that constituted the glory of God proclaimed to Moses is now found in the Word incarnate. What was proclaimed to Moses by the Lord as he passed by has now been seen, embodied in the incarnate Word, by the eyewitnesses.
Our God does abound love and faithfulness. Have I ever been a beneficiary and recipient of that compassion, graciousness, and the forgiveness of my sins. And I have seen, though through a veil, grace and truth come together in Jesus. I know they will follow me all the days of my life.
hesed we' emet. That fits much nicer on my wrist or foot, ha. But more importantly, it's a beautiful summary of God's character. His heart toward me in Christ is love and faithfulness.
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