Monday, January 28, 2008

No Bottom - No Problem

Some things have no bottom. The stomach of a teenage boy, for example. Can I get an a-men? They can hold ten times their own body weight at one setting, ask for dessert, and then be back in the pantry an hour later, moaning, "I'm hu-u-u-u-ngry."

There seems to be no bottom to the depths people will go to get money without having to earn it. There seems to be no bottom to the ignorance of people who can't sing, yet willingly share their painful lack of talent with the whole world on television.

There would be no bottom to this devotional if I were to try to list all the bottomless immorality that spans and spams this "Christian" nation called America.

I remember an old television commercial where trash littered a highway and a Native American stood on the side of that highway with tears streaming down his face. Apply that same idea to the founders and framers of this nation standing practically anywhere in America. They wouldn't just have a few tears. They would need immediate hospital care and fast-acting anti-depressants.

Ah, but all that is bottomless is not bad! Paul writes in Romans 5 of the super abundance of God's grace. While sin seems to have no end, it in fact DOES have an end. And if you stood at the very end of sin and looked out beyond it, you would still see grace as far as your eyes of faith would allow you. Grace is bottomless!

So is love. It is one thing to be amazed by God's grace; it's another to personally experience the length and depth of God's grace and realize that the source of it all is the Father's love.

Love has no bottom. There's not a stop sign on the road of love. 1st Corinthians 13 tells us that "love never fails." That means it never stops being love. Love never stops growing long. But it never stops growing deep, either. Love never ceases to increase in volume or in time.

Paul commended the Christians at Thessalonica for the depth of their love for one another (1st Thessalonians 4:9, 10). But then he said, "As good as ya'll are doing loving one another, I just want to encourage to keep loving one another a whole bunch more" (PV - perryphrase version). There's always more love.

However much you realize God loves you, slap the weight of a thousand universes on top of that and you've just added 1/1000th of a percent of the magnitude of God's love for you.

And if that blows your mind, let me 'splain something to ya: God's love for you truly has no end, so you can go ahead and add as many 0's to the above figure as you'd like and still not define the depth of God's love.

Go ahead. Get a new pencil and start adding zeros. Don't stop for lunch, don't sleep, just keep adding zeros, keep sharpening pencils, from now till next Christmas. You'll still be 99 yards from a touchdown on a billion football fields.

Better yet -- avoid the carpal tunnel syndrome you will get from that exercise and turn those zeros into hosannas! Praise and thank the Lord that His love and grace have no bottom.

Diving Into a Bottomless Bowl of Gratitude & Joy,
Perry Crisp

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