True Fidelity
Haiku
her broken heart found
hope in the One who loved with
true fidelity
The LORD appeared to us in the past, saying: “I have loved you with an everlasting love;
I have drawn you (to my heart) with unfailing kindness.”
Jeremiah 31:3
Many years ago, my mother told me that, while sitting in the balcony section of our little hometown church, she heard something in the sermon that captured her attention.
Life was difficult during that time, and she felt hopeless. Her marriage was falling apart, she had four children, was far from her California family, and didn’t know what to do.
She believed in God. In fact, when our family moved to Estherville, she drove around to many churches and asked God which church we should go to. She must have felt God’s nudging because we started attending Estherville Lutheran, one of the churches she had asked God about.
I don’t know how long we had been attending there, but while listening to one regular Sunday morning sermon, Mom heard the truth about Jesus. She learned that he is God who came as a man to save us from our sins and enable us to know and love him. She heard he loved her and she realized he was inviting her into that love.
She said it was a moment where faith came to her as though a veil was being lifted from her face, and she believed.
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This is a true love story and I wish I would have asked her more about that moment. What drew her?
I wonder if she was attracted to the God who kept his promises.
Perhaps the promise of a love that would not let go felt deeply inviting and true to the longing in her heart.
I’m guessing that the Holy Spirit hovered in and around, enabling her to trust the dependability of that kind of love.
And she said yes.
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I was young at that time and didn’t have a clear understanding of what was happening in our family. But I did know that through all the sadness, my mother stood firm and found strength in her relationship with Jesus. She endured heartache with grace and her four kids watched with love and amazement as she led us to forgive and understand as best we could.
How do you and I respond to this kind of trustworthy love that keeps faithfully looking for us?
In his book, Praying Like Monks Living Like Fools, Tyler Staton writes that we respond by praying. “Praying is loving. And learning to pray means learning to love.” He adds, “Prayer is about relationship, and that means fidelity is the only container within which it can truly flourish.”
Fidelity. Faithfulness. Relationship. Love. Talking. Listening. Asking questions. Being with and feeling secure.
These are relationship words, the kind we understand and long for, found perfectly in Jesus.
I believe God is faithful to us because he is the true Love of our lives.
Perfect love casts out fear…of abandonment and sorrow. He will not leave us.
His love invites us into a deeper trust.
During this Lenten season, I have been reviewing over and over how God showed his faithfulness by sending Jesus.
In these 40 days, we are invited to remember the road Jesus walked to the cross, how painful it was for him, and to remember he did it out of love.
Jesus also showed us how to travel that road with dignity, fortitude, and fidelity.
There are others, like my mom, who have walked down difficult roads with dignity and strength, even though it was painful. She hung on with the truth of God’s love and faithfulness to her.
I quote Tyler Staton again, “The wound opened up by infidelity is mended by a love that will never give up. Jesus on the final night of his life, says this to his followers: As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. Human infidelity is repaired by divine fidelity.”
Today I say, thank you, God, for showing us, through our mother, what God’s true fidelity looks like.
God’s faithfulness to her led me to believe and stand firm in his everpresent faithfulness to me.
What a legacy.
One that started on a regular Sunday morning during a regular Sunday morning sermon.
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Prayer: Dear Jesus, In your Word, you show us how to trust you when those who should have loved us fail to keep their promises. Thank you for being faithful to your commitment to love us with the promise that it will be everlasting and unfailing. Who can resist such a great and glorious love? Amen
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If you would like to explore these ideas further, here are a few guided Journal Prompts:
List some of the ways God has demonstrated his unfailing love to you.
Write about a season of suffering you endured.
In what ways are you proud of yourself and how you came through it?
How have you kept your focus on God’s tender faithfulness to you?
My mom’s birthday is coming up on March 24th, and the anniversary of her death is on April 5, 2008. I always find myself missing her at this time of the year.
Happy Birthday, Mom. You will forever live in our hearts as the BME = Best Mom Ever.