But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners. (Romans 5:8)
Week 6, Day 6
The boys in the neighborhood knew all about Ruthie. At the age when we discovered sex and still had not moved beyond a whispering knowledge, Ruthie was miles ahead of us.
I didn’t see Ruthie after tenth grade, until three years after I graduated from high school. I saw her sitting alone in a restaurant and asked if I could sit with her. She hesitated only a moment and then said, “Of course.”
Almost immediately we caught up on the intervening years. Ruthie told me she was now married to Greg. In quick sentences she told me about this mechanic who fixed her car and asked her for a date. When Greg took her out, he didn’t even try to kiss her. They went out three times before he ever held her hand.
“And you know why?” Ruthie said. “He said he loved me for who I was now.” Apparently Greg had heard the stories of her past, but it didn’t matter.
In one way or another we all have a past—the kind of things we’ve done but wouldn’t want the world to know. For some, it may be a promiscuous period in life because of the need to be loved. For others, it might have been cheating on tests or pilfering from a store. Whatever our mistakes, we don’t want them whispered or known.
Yet when real love comes along, our past doesn’t make any difference. We are loved for who we are now. Real love doesn’t reject us because of sins or mistakes of the past. We’re accepted now.
When we love a person unreservedly, we imitate God’s example of love for us. Paul, the greatest writer of the Bible, said that God proved his love for us in that while we were still sinners, he sent Christ to die for us.
I had become a Christian a few months before meeting Ruthie again. While we didn’t talk about religion or Christ, I recognized that she had received the kind of love all of us need—the unconditional love of another.
“My past doesn’t make any difference to him,” she said. “And you know, it makes me want to be the kind of wife he wants. There just isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for Greg. He loves me for who I am.”
That’s love.
God, because you love both of us without any attached conditions, help us understand that love, and give it to each other. Amen.