My fellow first-graders and I were ritualistically threatened to be sent to Mr. Williams.

He was the red-eyed high school principal rumored to spank children with his electric paddle.

Our teacher would march us in a line up the pea-gravel hill, believing we were about to be electrocuted, only to stop halfway and give us a second chance to be good.

A daily exercise in terror.

Then one day I got to meet Mr. Williams in person outside of school at the Homestead restaurant.

He smiled at me.

He was wonderfully kind, and his eyes were the same color as my grandfather’s.

Instantly, fear turned to trust.

From then on, I knew even if old Mrs. Firstgrade made good on her threats, Mr. Williams wasn’t who she said he was.

Even if I deserved to be sent to him, I trusted him. I’d met him for myself, and he was good.

* * * * *

A few weeks ago I visited a place I like to go some Sundays.

They don’t call it a church; they call it a house, and it lives up to that name.

We were there a while, and just as things were drawing to a close, a man approached the front and began speaking from his heart.

Everyone was standing, poised to leave, when he opened up to us.

Nobody moved.

I could barely see from the back, but I could hear… and I remember his voice muffling and my thoughts fixing on the sound of his words.

How full of love.

What he said about God was interesting and good, but the love for God in his voice and in his words…

How utterly at ease he was in knowing God loves him—loves all of us.

I’ve heard others just like him, but I was thinking to myself, had I heard this love from the beginning, I wouldn’t have had so much to unlearn.

I would’ve recognized God.

My religion wouldn’t have been “God loves me, but….”

I wouldn’t have been afraid to meet Him.

~

No one moved as the man spoke, though the hour was officially over.

We were captivated, unwilling to miss a word.

What he said was beyond loyalty, beyond knowledge, beyond religion.

It was love.

Then he shared a song in the simplest way: he just held his phone up to the microphone and let the music flow over us.

The song itself proved what I was already thinking. Though the artist initially sang in Welsh and though I had no idea what she was saying, I wanted whatever she was singing about.

If I’d never heard the Gospel at all, the love in her voice would be enough to make me beg someone to tell me Who it is she loves so much—Who loves her so much to make her sing like that.

 

Here is love…

Vast as the ocean….

 

I wasn’t the only one sniffling, overcome.

It was tangible, that love.

So I let myself cry.

I mourned years I felt threatened with God, just as I was threatened with Mr. Williams.

I mourned people who still terrorize others with His Name.

I mourned the emptiness of showmanship and condemnation.

I don’t wish I could tell you what was said, because it wouldn’t have the same effect.

You had to be there.

It was Presence.

The Good News is a mystery that we Gentiles sometimes try to capture in our holey nets, but when it shows up in such a way that can’t be contained or described, Abba draws people to Himself.

I don’t have to understand Jesus to know He’s the Way.

All I know is, whatever that love is, I want it.

 

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Here is Love

Here is love, vast as the ocean,
loving-kindness as the flood,
when the Prince of Life, our Ransom,
shed for us His precious blood.
Who His love will not remember?
Who can cease to sing His praise?
He can never be forgotten
throughout heav’n’s eternal days.

On the mount of crucifixion
fountains opened deep and wide;
through the floodgates of God’s mercy
flowed a vast and gracious tide.
Grace and love, like mighty rivers,
poured incessant from above,
and heav’n’s peace and perfect justice
kissed a guilty world in love.

 

~ William Rees

 

 

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“What can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus? … Nothing.”

~ Romans 8:31-39

 

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