Fathomless love: Deeper than the deepest ocean. Higher than the sky. Can you understand it? Neither can I. More than a man loves his wife; more than a mother her child. They would give their lives for the other. More than that is the love of the Father above.

How can a man give his son to the cruelest death of all? For those who don’t even know him; for those who actually hate him? Yet our God did all this because of His love for you and me.

Our Father wants us near, wants to commune with us, wants us to know Him as dearly as He knows you and me. How can we resist such love?

Yet, we do. We find other people and things more interesting. We give them our love – to a greater or lesser extent. But giving our heavenly Father our love – that’s a sacrifice we’re unwilling to make.

Ah, but we don’t know the rewards of His love. We can’t imagine the peace and the joy. And we don’t try. We think it’s a sacrifice to love Him but that’s wrong. If we only knew. In reality it’s a sacrifice not to love our heavenly Father.

Because then we lose all the love, peace and joy He wants to give us. We lose the strength and comfort that He will impart when we need them. We lose the reality of what matters in eternity. And we focus on what flies by so fleetingly.

We count our riches as what possessions we own. But our true wealth is what we store up in heaven as well as what we have here on earth. What love do we give out? It simply multiplies and returns to us. Our generosity does the same.

The love of our family exemplifies our Father’s love, even though it’s so much less. Our good done to others shows what greater good our God does for us. Our money to help someone we don’t even know demonstrates in a minor way what God did for you and me.

Only He knows us. He knew us before we were born (Psalm 139, Jeremiah 1:5.) Our heaven Father even planned what talents we’d have and when we’d be born. He knows what we will say before we say it – even those things we later wish we could take back.

What great love our God has for you and me. Do you know Him? He’s One of a Kind, Unique. His name is Love and He hurts for your distance from Him. Jesus is the way to this great and wonderful God. Let Jesus save you from all your rebellion from God. Then you will come to know Love. Fathomless Love. That is your heavenly Father.

“This is how much God loved the world: He gave his Son, his one and only Son. And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life. 17 God didn’t go to all the trouble of sending his Son merely to point an accusing finger, telling the world how bad it was. He came to help, to put the world right again. 18 Anyone who trusts in him is acquitted; anyone who refuses to trust him has long since been under the death sentence without knowing it. And why? Because of that person’s failure to believe in the one-of-a-kind Son of God when introduced to him. (John 3:16-18 THE MESSAGE: The Bible in Contemporary Language © 2002 by Eugene H. Peterson. All rights reserved.)