Even though the calendar says it's April I'm having a hard time believing it because every time I go outside it still feels like winter. The intermittent "warm" spells have melted all the snow, but about once a week it still falls and for a day everything is covered in white yet again. There was a snow storm this weekend. While here in the cities we got mostly slush it was worse up north.
I say all this just to preface the fact that this snow storm threatened to ruin my church's "Spring" retreat. We were supposed to go up north, but the snow kept us here in Minneapolis. I was looking forward to getting away for the weekend, and I was not very optimistic about the prospect of having retreat at church in the heart of downtown and less than a mile from law school, the very place I wanted to get away from. However, God is good, and knows better than I do, and I leave this weekend feeling totally blessed.
I've struggled at times with trying to believe that even if I were the only person ever alive that Jesus would still have died for me. I've wondered if the grace I receive in Christ's death is only a byproduct of the fact that God loves all people and I just happen to be a person. This weekend we talked about God's infinite worth, and while God's personal love for me was not necessarily the primary topic, the Spirit definitely laid some heavy things on my heart. I hadn't thought about this struggle in quite some time. I think for the most part I've gotten over it. Still, today I totally had an "aha!" moment. Someone mentioned that God's attributes are infinite. He is infinitely merciful, infinitely just, infinitely gracious, infinitely powerful... and infinitely loving.
I can't even begin to wrap my mind around what it means that God is infinitely loving. By wondering if God loved me as an individual, I stuck his capacity to love in a box. A God who loves infinitely has no boundaries. Perhaps this is why he loves us even when we slap him in the face by doing wrong. It's just another one of those paradoxes of God that I really cannot explain, but still I experience it. God, who is greater than anything I can imagine and is worthy of so much more than I can offer, doesn't just see me in a crowd of faceless people half-heartedly attempting to glorify him, he sees me and he loves me.
