Psalm 84:1-2, 10-12 – How lovely is your dwelling place, Lord Almighty! 2 My soul yearns, even faints, for the courts of the Lord; my heart and my flesh cry out for the living God. Better is one day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere; I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of the wicked. 11 For the Lord God is a sun and shield; the Lord bestows favor and honor; no good thing does he withhold from those whose walk is blameless. 2 Lord Almighty, blessed is the one who trusts in you.
I remember watching, so many years ago, the TV miniseries Roots. I was enthralled with every episode. It was 1977 and I was nineteen years old. There was a scene in the movie when a West African father, Omoro, held up his son, presenting his son to God and to the world and he shouted “I have a son…Kunta Kinte.” Four years later the Lord blessed my wife and I with a son. The gratitude to God for the birth of my son and the instant and eternal love for my son overwhelmed me. I remembered and now fully understood the thankful and jubilant act of Omoro presenting his son to God and the world. I also held up my son over my head and shouted “I have a son…Robert Julian Lopez II!” With a love for my son pulsing through me and becoming an inseparable and inviolable part of me, I cried.
Four years after my son was born my wife was about to give birth to our second son. I had prayed and wondered, could I ever love another child how much I loved our first son? As it turns out, I should have never have worried about such a thing. Since his birth I always have and ever will love my second son with all the fire and dedication that I have loved his brother with. In fact, it is hard for me to understand people who have a “favorite child.” I have always loved my sons equally, thanking God for them both, and enjoying them both. They are wonderfully unique and both bless me equally. And yes, with tears of joy and love flowing down my cheeks, I held up to God and to the world my second son shouted “I have a son…Raymond Paul Lopez!”
I am a blessed man.
Yet my greatest blessing is not my wonderful wife or my wonderful sons. My highest blessing is God. He loves me even more than I love my sons. I love my family with all that I is humanly possible, but God loves me as is only possible with God. When times I have been bad, when I have cried so hard my soul bled out of me, He was with me. When I have been ugly, He is with me. When I have hurt others and cried so hard that I could be so mean, He is with me. In fact He takes me in His arms and when He does I am home and with Him. With God, I believe that I am alone with Him who loves all the inhabitants of the world. But when I am in His presence, I am only aware of Him with me. I like it that way! I like His face to shine upon me. I love knowing His laugh. I want only to be with God! With Him the problems of the world disappear. They don’t go away, but the awareness of them disappear when I am with the Lord. He is my hiding place. He is my joy. He is life refreshed.
Last week my Tia Lupe went to be with Jesus. Like God, she loved me before I loved her. She always loved me. I remember how she looked at me. She knew many of my faults and she loved me still. And you know what she would do when I would visit her at the senior apartment complex that she lived in, she would make sure that she told everyone we saw there that I was her nephew. She was proud of me. Her love for me helps me to understand God’s love for me. When I knew no reason to be proud of me, she was. When I knew of no reason to love me, she did. So she, just by loving me as she did, taught me a deeper lesson about God’s love for me. She loved me not because I deserved it, but simply because of who she was. I am happy she is with Jesus. She is with the One who loved her before she loved Him.
A great place to be is to be with the ones who love you. There is no greater place to be than with God Almighty who loves you most. Family, “knowing God” is not merely an academic pursuit of His Word. One of the ways He reveals Himself to us is through His Word. Yet let us not be misled or deceived, He put Himself within us so that we could also experience His life and love within us and for us. Let us daily wander the courtyards of God with Him as He explains mysteries that are so far beyond us we don’t even think to ask. We can do that now, while here on earth. There will come the day when He brings us home to be with Him forever. Yet I pray for all of you that you know, or begin to know, that we can be One on one with God even now. Right now. Family, I pray that you not only know that God is with you, but that you unmistakably experience that. Nothing is better than the love we all share with each other…except the love that God wants to share with us. May you walk daily in the awareness in God’s love for you and His presence with you! Praise God!
Psalm 150:6 – Let everything that has breath praise the Lord. Praise the Lord!
Micah 7:7 – But as for me, I watch in hope for the Lord, I wait for God my Savior; my God will hear me.
Micah 6:8 – He has shown You, O man, what is good; And what does the Lord require of You but to do justly, to love mercy, And to walk humbly with Your God.