Today I messed up. I had reasons (AKA excuses) as to why I messed up: I had a baby who started crying mid-morning and didn’t stop literally until mid-afternoon. Then he woke from his nap crying again and cried until night.
During this time, the love that I’m commanded to have flew out of the window. 1 Corinthians 13 tells me love is patient and kind. I was neither of these. I yelled, fussed and griped. I even yelled at a kid who wasn’t doing anything wrong – actually, he had done everything that he was supposed to.
However, no matter how hard the day is going it keeps going. The earth keeps rotating and night eventually comes. And, like always, when night finally came I took my littlest boy (the one who had been screaming all day) in the bedroom to rock him to sleep. As I was looking at his cute face (yes, it was still cute even in my frustration) I began to sing him a song. As I did he sat up, put his arms around me and snuggled tightly into my neck. I was reminded of my dad’s favorite bible verse: Zephaniah 3:17, “TheLord, your God, is with you, the Mighty Warrior who saves. He will take great delight in you; in his love, he will no longer rebuke you,but will rejoice over you with singing.”
I suddenly had a picture of my Abba wrapping his big arms around me and start singing over me. It didn’t matter that I had messed up – actually because I had messed up I think maybe he sang a little softer to calm my spirit.
1 Corinthians 13:7 says that “It (love) always protects … always perseveres.” The King James version reads, “Beareth all things” If I go back to the original Greek wording here, beareth means “to roof over” – to cover, to protect, to hold back the bad or unsafe. Perseveres means to stay or to remain. In that moment it didn’t matter that I had failed, God was still covering me, singing over me in love; perfect lover that never messes up, that never fails. Not only that but He has promised that He will remain right beside me to shield me from the things that are bad or unsafe.
I also have another promise that give me hope in my failures, “It is of theLord's mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not.They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness.” His love is not based on me, it’s based on Him, which means that no matter what I’ve done, in the words of Anne Shirley, “Tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it yet.” Because of His great mercy, he will be there to “roof over” me and rejoice over me with singing.
So, where ever today takes you remember this: Romans 8:38-39 says, “For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come,Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God.”
Just be still and listen to the song that is being sung over you!
