It’s not surprising that we should love God.

We breathe His air, bask in His sun and enjoy the life-sustaining water He created. Without these things we would cease to be. We owe Him our very existence.

That God would love me is inconceivable. What is there to love?

People, at our best, are not lovable creatures. Oh, we have our moments to be sure. But most of the time, we have attitudes, dispositions and quirks that make us very unappealing. We are self-centered, unthankful, moody, insatiable, unholy creatures who are drawn to the very things that would destroy us.

The more we have, the more we want, the less we give. Denied something, we willing forsake all else to possess that one thing. As soon as we grasp it, we complain about what we lack in some other realm.

We Westerners whine about what a friend described over dinner as: “First World problems,” things like not having enough clean towels at the gym or the water not being hot enough; being served a restaurant meal that’s not quite what we’d hoped, valet parkers who don’t bring the car ’round precisely when we exit.

Nauseating stuff… when you consider people routinely are going to bed hungry, sleeping outdoors and walking miles for clean water.

In a perfect world, a holy God would have nothing to do with us. He would long ago have wiped clean the planet of any trace of our contaminating presence and started over.

In fact, God told Moses He would do that very thing and start over with him when the people continually complained about the hardships of freedom and insisted on returning to the slavery of sin and Egypt. (Deu 9:14)

But God relented, and here we are.

As we contemplate love in the wake of Valentine’s Day, let’s stop to consider that it is because of self-sacrificing love that we enjoy the blessing of being (John 3:16-17).

Personally, I tire of bearing with other people’s faults and shortcomings.  Yet, God just hangs in there with me and my messes. Love suffers long and is kind. (1 Cor 13:4) I still have much to learn about real love.

Jesus repeatedly asked a repentant Peter one question: “Do you love me?”

Many of us really don’t love God. We ought to.

Through the Lord’s mercies we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not. (Lamentations 3:22)