Uplifting Love
Deuteronomy 10:14-15
“Behold, to the LORD your God belong heaven and the heaven of heavens, the earth with all that is in it. Yet the LORD set his heart in love on your fathers and chose their offspring after them, you above all peoples, as you are this day.”
To think that the Creator of the universe, of constellations and mountain ranges and ocean depths, Who painted the Northern Lights and the Grand Canyon and rainbows over Niagara’s bubbling swells, Who taught the Sparrow a morning hymn and gave the eagle her wings and blessed the Cheetah with lightning speed, Who thought up snow falling from an Eastern White Pine in winter and golden Caribbean shorelines in summer and ribbons of fluorescent leaves floating on the breeze in autumn, would look at petty, stubborn, sinful, discontented, disillusioned, disobedient, complaining, rebellious human beings like us and whisper through all the choir of created voices, “I love you most!” A saint who sees himself rightly, who understands his own fickleness, will never stand before a sequoia in a Californian forest and gloat, “Ah, but I’m so much taller!”, or watch a sunset over the Blue Ridge Mountains and claim, “Ah, but I’m so much brighter!”, or look at the sinful soul praying next to him in church and say, “Ah, but I’m so much better!” A saint will look at the breathtaking wonders of God’s masterwork, and, if he finds words at all, will exclaim, “Me, LORD? But what am I? Amazing love!—how can it be?!”
Moses isn’t preaching this word to these pilgrims because he’s hoping to make Pharisees out of them. He isn’t desiring for them to trample through the Promised Land with puffed up expressions, thinking themselves more virtuous than others, wearing their unique calling as something merited. No! He implores them to marvel that the very God Who made mountains and constellations and Red Seas chose them at all. He wants them to recognize that they’ve been extravagantly graced by the LORD rather than gotten what their sins deserved.
Friend, we’ve got no chance of loving the LORD with all our hearts and our neighbors as ourselves if we’re glorying more in our exalted position than the cross of Christ that lifted us there.