How precious is your unfailing love, O God! All humanity finds shelter in the shadow of your wings. You feed them from the abundance of your own house, letting them drink from your river of delights.
Psalm 36:7-8 (NLT)

Have you ever played the game effeuiller la marguerite? It’s a game of French origin that basically means ‘to rip off the daisy’s leaves’. You may know it better as ‘She/He loves me, She/He loves me not’. It’s a game where one person seeks to determine whether the object of their affection returns that affection, or not. A person playing the game alternately says, for example, ‘He loves me’, ‘He loves me not’, while picking one petal off a flower, as they speak. The phrase they speak when picking the last petal supposedly reveals whether the object of their affection loves them, or not.

Some people play this game with God:

 I’ve been good today: I’ve prayed, completed some Bible study, helped some people – He loves me. I’ve had a bad day: I’ve skipped prayer and Bible study, lost my temper in the supermarket – He loves me not.

Everything is going well in my life: I have a good job, a loving family, good health – He loves me. Things are really bad at the moment: I’m unemployed, estranged from my family, and have health problems – He loves me not. 

When we take this approach with God, we can never be sure of his love. We will always be asking ourselves the question: ‘Have I done enough today to warrant God’s love?’ We will always be thinking that God blesses me when he loves me, and curses me when he loves me not. But God is not fickle, and neither is his love. In fact, ‘God is love’ (1 John 4:8). This is who he is, in his essential being. This means that he cannot act towards us in any other way and still be true to himself.  

God’s love is constant. There is nothing we can do (or not do) to make him love us any more, or love us any less. He loves us with all that he is. There is nothing more powerful than to know that God’s love is constant and unchanging. To realise that nothing can take that away is so affirming and liberating.

God wants us to realise that his love is so wide we can’t get around it; so long we can’t exhaust it or get away from it; so high we can’t get over it, and so deep we can’t get under it, or fathom its depths. (Ephesians 3:18). In fact there is no human experience that we might walk through where God’s love cannot reach us. There is no greater love than this.

Prayer
Loving Father, we are so aware of our human frailty, and yet overwhelmed by your love for us. Help us to rest in that love and in turn, learn to love you more. In Jesus’s name, Amen.