'Love of every love the best'

Be soft of voice
and gentle of bearing
Be kind of heart
and tender of hands
Be bright as the morn
and still as the evening
Within you they’ll find
God’s love reborn.
~ Mrs. Eva Hauk ~

This is something that has been on my heart lately. It was a tough week, what with a lot of things not happening as planned, and mistakes being made. I was certainly not 'soft of voice' or 'gentle of bearing' at times.

I watch my mother with amazement. She shows mercy, compassion and love at times where they are unmerited. Will I ever learn to do the same? Surely one of the greatest gifts a woman can possess is love: for her Lord, her family, and all others God brings into her life. What is Christian hospitality without love? What kind of home environment would there be without compassion? How long would friendships last without tender mercy towards each other and our failings?

What is this kind of love?

"The Love of God is uninfluenced. By this we mean, there was nothing whatever in the objects of his love to call it into exercise, nothing in the creature to attract or prompt it. The love which one creature has for another is because of something in the object; but the love of God is free, spontaneous, uncaused. The only reason why God loves any is found in his own sovereign will: "The Lord did not set his love upon you, nor choose you because ye were more in number that any people; for ye were the fewest of all people: but because the Lord loved thee" (Deut. 7:7-8). God has loved his people from everlasting, and therefore nothing about the creature can be the cause of what is found in God from eternity. He loves from himself: "according to his own purpose" (2 Tim. 1:9).

"We love him, because he first loved us" (1 John 4:19). God did not love us because we loved him, but he loved us before we had a particle of love for him. Had God loved us in return for ours, then it would not be spontaneous on his part; but because he loved us when we were loveless, it is clear that his love was uninfluenced. It is highly important, if God is to be honored and the heart of his child established, that we should be quite clear upon this precious truth. God's love for me and for each of "his own" was entirely unmoved by anything in us. What was there in me to attract the heart of God? Absolutely nothing. But, to the contrary, there was everything to repel him, everything calculated to make him loathe me - sinful, depraved, a mass of corruption, with "no good thing" in me.

"What was there in me that could merit esteem,
Or give the Creator delight?
Twas even so, Father, I ever must sing,
Because it seemed good in Thy sight." "

~ Taken from "The Attributes of God" by Arthur W. Pink ~

May we girls learn to be 'kind of heart' and 'tender of hands' to our families because we understand the vast, unmerited love of our Father.