Why does God love us? (Part 3)

It's still a question that's been buzzing around my head lately and seems to come up quite often and relate to so many areas of Christianity. I guess it is actually a key issue and I can't quite understand why I've never questioned it or obviously, fully grasped it before.

But, I do feel like I had a bit of an epiphany the other night!

My church had an evangelistic event on which was like a Grill-a-Christian style evening with a panel of Christians answering some of the most commonly posed questions about Christianity. And whilst this question wasn't one of them, something else that was said made something click in my head.

The panelist was saying how it would have been perfectly just for God to have wiped out humanity after Adam and Eve rebelled against Him, and to have just started again. But He didn't, and so I wondered, well why not? That surely would have been the easy solution to the problem. Well... because He lovesd them! Which may have once lead me back to the same question of, yes but WHY?! But at that moment, back when they were the first ones, it just seems easier to comprehend that God loved them because He had made them and they were His creation. Yes they had made a mistake but He didn't want to just destroy them for it, even though they deserved it, He wanted to solve the problem, at any cost. He wanted to solve the problem so much, because He loved them so much and didn't want them to have to be detroyed, that He came Himself to BE that solution.

I guess when we make things, we often love them, even if it seems silly. For example, I might make a cushion or something with my sewing machine, and if it gets ruined by having something spilled on it, well because I LOVE it and because I MADE it, I won't just throw it out but I'll make every effort to clean it and restore it to be like it was originally.

We were looking at Psalms last night at North West Partnership too and looked at Psalm 8 where David wrote "When I consider you heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them?" Essentially... why do you care about us? Why do you love us?

And although I read this passage before when thinking about this, I never understood before how he answers his own question in the following verses: "You have made them a little lower than the angels and crowned them with glory and honour. You made them rulers over the works of your hands; you put everything under their fgeet; all flocks and herds, and the animals of the wild, the birds in the sky, and the fish in the sea, all that swim the paths of the seas."

This is how Justin summarised it last night:

"Why does humanity have significance? Because God GAVE us significance."

So I do feel more satisfied about the question now, but there's still the question of whyyy did he give us significance....??

I'm not sure there's really an answer to that but Isaiah 55 says: "Seek the LORD while he may be found; call on him while he is near. Let the wicked forsake their ways and the unrighteous their thoughts. Let them turn to the LORD, and he will have mercy on them, and to our God, for he will freely pardon."

Why?

 "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways," declares the LORD. "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts."