A Love that Rescues and Redeems

Anytime a person helps someone else in a great time of need a bond is formed, a bridge is built, a connection is made. Initially, that is how I established my personal relationship with Christ. I saw my great need and no longer felt self-sufficient. Instead, I found myself breathing an air of desperation rather than sophistication. Then I experienced his hands reaching down from heaven to pick me up from the place where I felt so fallen. Before that moment I might have seen this hand up as more of a handout, but instead I let him pull me close and whisper tenderly to my broken heart, "Remain in my love". Then a bond was formed, a bridge was built, and an eternal connection was made. In Matthew 22:37-39 Jesus says, "'...love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. A second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’" I recently put these commands into practice when my mother in law needed emergency medical care. God gave me the opportunity to love her as myself by serving her through a time of sickness and recovery. Our relationship over the past thirteen years has been one that has pushed me and challenged me over and over again to love the way Christ loves. And today I experienced redemption when she hugged me and whispered, "Thank you so much for all you have done for me." In that moment, I believe a bond was formed, a bridge was built, a connection was made-not just between my mother in law and me, but between my mother in law and Christ in me. Have you experienced the kind of love that rescues and redeems, either with Jesus himself or through Jesus's love surfacing in another way?