Home » Programs » Word Pictures » Love Letter

Love Letter

The other day a friend approached me and asked me if I had time to listen to something. She read me a note she had written and asked me what I understood from it. Maybe it’s just because I’m a superficial kind of person, but I took the words at face value and indicated that the note was unremarkable in its clarity. She looked relieved and thanked me. Seems that the recipient of the note had worked hard reading between the lines and had totally missed the point.

This kind of thing is unfortunate, but it happens more often than we’d like. On more than one occasion, I’ve been advised to be careful about what I put in writing because people will infer all kinds of things as they try to get to some deeper level of meaning. Then, because they have a piece of paper in their hand, they think they have hard evidence that proves their misunderstanding of my point.

This can happen with both good motives and bad. Once we go beyond the surface of the text, we easily start wandering about in the dark corners of own minds. If it is true that one may miss seeing the forest because of all the trees, it is equally true that one may miss the sentence because of focussing only on the individual words.

While it’s important to understand what the Bible says to us, it is unnecessary to understand everything before we can commit ourselves to being followers of Jesus. Only after we are following Jesus, will we begin to have the clearer understanding of the Bible that eludes us until that point.

The account of God’s love for us as individuals is remarkably clear. It is expressed in the death of His Son the Lord Jesus Christ in our place. This is the beginning point of the Christian faith. Sometimes people cannot see this because of stumbling blocks regarding all kinds of things.

Truth be told, we don’t know exactly how God did a lot of things in the past. Timelines are somewhat unclear. While we do have prophetic passages in the Bible that give a general impression of future events, legitimate ways of understanding the specifics still vie for broader acceptance. Sometimes, we just have to accept that we don’t know and may not ever know everything we want to about some of the details that fascinate us.

God’s expression of Himself through nature, the Bible and the Lord Jesus Christ is enough to keep us all enthralled indefinitely, but don’t be distracted from the simple, clearly articulated statements regarding His love for you. As the apostle John wrote: “What marvellous love the Father has extended to us! Just look at it—we’re called children of God! That’s who we really are.” [1 John 3:1 MSG]

Ron Hughes
© Febuary 2009