i don’t doubt God’s love for me. I’ve seen it, experienced it, known it. im so confident in it. but lately, i’ve been praying for Him to show me just how deeply He loves me and that i would openly receive it. i want to be able to openly love and serve the others around me, but in order to do that, i want to know the Fathers love more deeply. the truth is, i’ll never be able to fully understand it. ephesians 3:17 says, “how wide and long and high and deep is the love of christ” and that His love “surpasses human knowledge”. as humans, we’ll never truly be able to grasp the idea of a completely unconditional, holy, and perfect love. especially when we constantly mess up, and the idea of a perfect Creator loving imperfect, broken, and messy people is not just hard, but impossible to fully understand.
my prayer was not just to know that God loved me, but to go each and every day and experience His love. not that God doesn’t pour out His love every single day of my life, but again as that messy, imperfect human, i completely miss it all the time. my prayer was for eyes to see, ears to hear, and a knowledge not just about God, but a knowledge of God. that is my prayer every morning, that if i can just even get a tiny glimpse of His love for me, it will be enough.
every morning, on the ride to ministry, we go down a long dirt road, with trees and rice fields on either side of us. water buffalo just freely roam around, and watch us as we pass. there’s huge holes in the road, and whenever it rains, (which is pretty much all the time) they fill with water that almost comes in our songthaew when we drive through it. sitting on the back of the truck, i said, “i’ve always wanted to go on a walk down this dirt road. i really wish we had the time to do that.” when we hopped off the songthaew, i headed over to the daycare to see all the kids running out of the gates and yelling. i frantically started trying to gather them up, thinking that one of the more experienced escape artists had decided to open the gate. my friend Constanza, who takes care of the kids in the daycare, walked out and said, “i think we are going to go on a walk today, would you like to come with us?”. okay Jesus! i see you! i walked down the dirt road, giggling the whole time because of how good my Father is. i held hands with the kids and waded and splashed through the huge mud puddles with them. they pointed out water buffalo, picked flowers and brought them to me, and raced each other to the end of the road. what a sweet reminder of God’s love. He surprised me with such a simple desire on my heart. couldn’t help but thank Him the whole time! after almost two months of being at ministry, this has become an almost every day thing. we go on our daily walk down the dirt road, and God teaches me something new every time.
a way that i feel most present with God is by seeing the stars. at home there was a backroad that I would take every night on my way home just because it was the best for seeing them. my favorite thing in the whole world is to get lots of blankets and go stargazing. looking at them and realizing that God made that, and then looks at me and thinks i’m all the world more beautiful is so mind-blowing to me. something i told myself before leaving home was that i couldn’t wait for all the nights i would get to see stars on the other side of the globe. when arriving in chiang mai, and on the discovery that we have a huge roof that is perfect to watch the stars on at night, i was so overjoyed. but…no stars. the city lights are so bright that it’s essentially impossible to get a good view of them. i was super disappointed, but i knew that once i did get to see them, it would be way more special.
this morning, my team and i decided to get up at 3.30 am to watch the sunrise on top of a buddhist temple. we took a 45 minute songthaew ride out of the city and to the top of the mountain. we climbed up over a hundred stairs and finally got to the top of doi suthep. when we walked to the look out, we had the most beautiful view of chiang mai and all of the city lights. it reminded me of the first time i ever saw chiang mai — at night from a plane window. i was so blown away. we live there, i said. and then, i looked up, and saw all the billions of stars in the night sky. i was so overwhelmed with love from my Father in that one moment. everywhere i looked, i could see the stars. i layed on my back on the temple floor and just watched the sky. thanked God above, and prayed for the city below. thanked Him that He picked me, of all people, to live this life. felt super small in comparison to how big He is.
1 John 3:1 says, “see what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! and that is what we are!” not just that God has given us love, but that he has lavished it on us. not just that God loves us, but that He is love. most of us in the church are told this over and over, and we know this seemingly fundamental truth, but i feel that often, so many struggle to really experience His love — myself included. in reality, when you are seeking after Him daily, this love is something that will not be unfamiliar to you. He will prove his love to you over and over again, and surpass any expectation you had of what that love would look like. and that is my prayer for everyone reading this — that you would truly experience the love that Your heavenly father has for you. that it would not just be head knowledge, but heart knowledge as well.
thank you so much for reading my blog this week!!! please reach out to me about any questions you have of life on the field, or even if you just need some simple encouragement!! xx tay morg
