The Cross: The Symbol of God's Eternal Love

One by one, she handed out the small crochet hearts, enclosed in a Ziploc bag, with a poem that ended like this:

“The heart is small, so it could be carried,

In a pocket, purse, or hand.

But, in case you lose or forget it somewhere,

Remember, His love for you doesn’t end” 

I didn’t think most people would take them, but as I saw one person after the other gripping the little bag, I knew the words in her poem were true. His love for us doesn’t end. 

A week before I reached out to her, a new church member, I was struggling to believe God’s love for me. How could I trust a love that had abandoned me to the pain of my body and the loneliness of my struggle? It seemed impossible that God's love was still there after all I had gone through that year. 

It took all the strength I had left to get dressed every morning. I felt like a stranger in my own body. One particular morning, tired of inhabiting a body that had bruised my perception of God, I heard His voice: I still love you. No big revelation. No antidote to make my body healthier at once. No insight into why everything was happening. Just four words. 

While this was a truth I had known for as long as I knew about Christ's sacrifice for me, it wasn't a truth I had experienced to its full effect. Only once I came face-to-face with my sin did I begin to understand it. After getting parasites and gaining over 20 pounds in the span of a year, sins that I had long ignored came to the surface: my vanity, my pride, my disbelief. But when my sins were much, I kept rejoicing that God’s love for me was much more (Romans 5:20). When I kept falling on my face, returning to my familiar sins, I found comfort in the fact that his love never stops. It always finds us, ready to pick us up, comfort us, and tell us: I am still here. 

There’s no tribulation or sin too big where the love of God can’t rescue us. But don’t take my word for it. Let’s see what God’s Word has to say about it:

“For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:38-39, ESV)

This love we can experience by putting our faith in Jesus Christ and what he did at the cross is always present. God’s love for us doesn’t disappear when we go through trials. He loves us till the end. Why else would our Father send his beloved, blameless son to take on our punishment? His love for us is at its most glorious display at the cross, but it doesn’t stop there. This love is present in our favorite foods, the embrace of a loved one, and the gentle reminders from His Word that we are not alone. He saved you because he wanted you to experience his love for you once again. He wanted you to experience it today, tomorrow, and every day till Christ returns. 

It is in the trials that feel never-ending, revealing our sins, when we must hold on to his love more than anything else. These trials make us vulnerable to the enemy’s lies and the temptation to isolate ourselves, so when we decide to daily read God’s Word, ask for his help in prayer, and lean on other believers (probably going through trials too), our eyes behold a truth that was there all along: 

His love for you doesn’t end. 

Will you pray with me?

Loving Father, 

Thank you for everlasting love. 

What would we do without your constant reminders that you still love us?

You are so faithful and kind even when we are not. 

We praise you for saving us by sending your beloved son to die for all of us. 

Thank you for calling us beloved too. Thank you because you will never stop calling us beloved.

When we start to doubt your love, point us back to your Son and

remind us that your love overflows from that moment in Calvary to the very moment of 

me reading this prayer. The comfort of your Spirit, the joy of community, the daily delights in our

everyday routines—these are all your love at work in our lives.

You tell us that our hearts shouldn’t be troubled, neither should they be afraid, because your spirit, through

whom you poured out your love into us, lives within us (John 14:27)

May this be true as I go on with my day. 

In Jesus’ name, 

Amen