Today's 'korner' is written by Chad Chapman and was part of yesterday's Communion Meditation. Perfect to kickoff February!

 

"I love you and there’s nothing you can do about it."

"If that sentence sounds familiar to some of you, it might be because it was said at least twice in the recent movie Soul on Fire.  Soul on Fire is a true story about John O’Leary. As a young boy, John made a huge mistake while playing with fire and it nearly cost him his life. The doctors told John’s parents that he had burned 100% of his body and had a 1% chance of survival.  Immediately while at the hospital his father said to him, 'I Love you and there’s nothing you can do about it,'  Again he said it to John on the phone after a car accident, and possibly other times that I might have missed. Either way, this was a statement that John’s father often told John throughout his life. It wasn’t necessarily a huge part of the movie, but it really caught my attention.

"I am not here today to go on about that movie, after all, if you haven’t seen it, I don’t want to spoil it for you.  It is an excellent movie, and I do highly recommend that you see it if you haven’t already.

"But just thinking about that statement, I love you and there’s nothing you can do about it, really hit me hard. It immediately made me think about our Holy Father. He has probably said that to me about a million times by now.  I am sure He says it each time I mess up, or sin. I know He says it when I glorify His name, help out one of his children, or even when I pray. He says it when He knows I have worry or trouble on my mind. That statement really hits home about how truly unconditional our Father’s love is for each one of us.  We know that there are many people on earth who choose not to love Him back, because He gives us that free will, but I can only imagine that He tells those people, and everyone else, 'I love you and there’s nothing you can do about it'.  These can be great words to hear, and they can also be hard ones to hear when we feel like we are not properly reciprocating the love back to our Holy Father. But the truth still stands, our Father always loves us.  We know the verse John 3:16, this is the ultimate demonstration of God’s love.  In 1 John chapter 4 verse 19 it says, “We love because he loved us first.”  And in 1 Corinthians, we hear that short, but ever so powerful sentence consisting of just seven simple words, "But the greatest of these is love."
So, my prayer for you, me and everyone of God’s children is that we hear him speak those words, 'I love you and there is nothing you can do about it.'"

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