Father, your love is so amazing and wonderful. It is inexorable and unrelenting towards those you love. Nothing and no one can stop your love. You are so very patient with us. You do not get discouraged when we do not respond as you would hope that we would. You just keep loving us. You are so kind. You think not about yourself, but you persistently and constantly think about us and what would be the very best for us. You are not envious of anyone or anything. You are not jealous or resentful of anyone. You are complete in yourself and content with who you are. Because of this, you are joyful when any of us is successful. You do not boast about anything, though you could. You created all that is, was, and is to come. All that we have and all that we are comes from you. So, you could boast about that. Who else could accomplish that? No one. Yet you do not make much of who you are or what you have done. You are preoccupied with us and who we are becoming and what we are doing. You are not proud of what you have done. You are humble. You simply acknowledge who you are and what you have done with no embellishments or need for anyone to prop you up. You are so humble that you made yourself one of us and walked among us for 33 years. Jesus did not presume to be anything but a man when he walked among us. He did not set himself up as God but did everything as a man fully surrendered to the will of you, his Father. Father, you are never rude. You are always respectful of who we are, who you made us to be, people made in your image. You are not intrusive. You always wait to be invited. When you are invited in, you take great delight in the invitation and take a lowly place, waiting to be invited to a higher place, the place that rightfully belongs to you. You do not impose yourself on anyone. You do not seek anything for yourself because you have need of nothing. You are complete and content with who you are. You are always looking for the good of others, not yourself. You are not easily angered. You know us intimately and know our weaknesses. When we fail to follow you or your ways, you could get angry with us, but you do not. You are patient with us, knowing that in time we will come around. When we harm those around us, you do not immediately punish us in anger. You are sad that we have done the harm to one of yours, but you gently prod us to consider that harm we have caused and encourage us to repent and ask for the forgiveness of the one we have harmed. You do not keep a record of the wrongs we have done. That is not important to you. What you want is to see us doing good, and you work very hard at showing us how to do good. That is your goal. You do not want to count our transgressions against us. In fact, you sacrificed your only son, Jesus, so that you would not have to do so. You take no delight in anything evil. You take no delight and want no part of deceit. You rejoice when the truth is told and is followed. That is your goal. For you are always about the truth, what is real. You always protect us. When someone harms us, you work overtime to turn that harm into something good for us. You always trust that your love will prevail in the end. You are persistently and constantly hopeful that we will follow your ways and walk in the truth. That is your highest goal. You never give up on us. You are with us through thick and thin. You never fail. It is my highest hope that I can love like you do. I want to be exactly like you in this way. I want to love others the way you love me. Help me to do so more and more each day. This is my prayer. Amen.
