You Are Loved

This is a wee devotional I read aloud during our Palm Sunday service last weekend; I also posted the link to it in my LJ a couple of years ago for Easter weekend.  I really find these thoughts very encouraging and moving, and I wanted to share it here written out so I can find again later, when I need the reminder!

You Are Loved

by Max Lucado

"Can anything make me stop loving you?" God asks.

"Watch me speak your language, sleep on your earth, and feel your hurts. Behold the maker of sight and sound as He sneezes, coughs, and blows His nose. You wonder if I understand how you feel? Look into the dancing eyes of the kid in Nazareth; that's God walking to school. Ponder the toddler at Mary's table; that's God spilling His milk.

"You wonder how long my love will last?

"Find your answer on a splintered cross, on a craggy hill. That's me you see up there, your maker, your God, nail-stabbed and bleeding. Covered in spit and sin-soaked. That's your sin I'm feeling. That's your death I'm dying. That's your resurrection I'm living. That's how much I love you."

"Can anything come between you and me?" asks the firstborn Son.

Hear the answer and stake your future on the triumphant words of Paul: "I am sure that neither death, nor life, not angels, not ruling spirits, nothing now, nothing in the future, no powers, nothing above us, nothing below us, nor anything else in the whole world will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord" (ROMANS 8:38-39 NCV).

Max Lucado quote is from his book In the Grip of Grace.