The glorious message of Scripture is that we do not have to be perfect for our Maker to love us. All through the great stories, heavenly love is lavished on visibly imperfect people. Scripture asks us to look at Jacob as he really is, to look at ourselves as we really are, and then realize that this is who God loves. God did not love Jacob because he was a cheat, but because he was Jacob. God love us in our complex isness, and when we get stuck on the image of the totally virtuous and morally perfect person we will never be, we are unable to accept this unqualified love, or to love other people in their rich complexity.
If God can love Jacob -- or any single one of us -- as we really are, then it is possible for us to turn in love to those who hurt of confuse us. Those we know and those we do not know. And that makes me take a new look at love.
Madeleine L'Engle: Glimpses of Grace; July 24; pp194-5
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