Unrelenting love

Wednesday 21^st June

Read 2 Corinthians 12:14-18

“Now I am ready to visit you for the third time, and I will not be a burden to you, because what I want is not your possessions but you. After all, children should not have to save up for their parents, but parents for their children. ¹⁵So I will very gladly spend for you everything I have and expend myself as well. If I love you more, will you love me less? ¹⁶Be that as it may, I have not been a burden to you. Yet, crafty fellow that I am, I caught you by trickery! ¹⁷Did I exploit you through any of the men I sent to you? ¹⁸I urged Titus to go to you and I sent our brother with him. Titus did not exploit you, did he? Did we not walk in the same footsteps by the same Spirit?” (NIVUK)

Amazing love, wasted on an ungrateful church! Not only do they question Paul’s refusal to accept ‘payment for preaching services rendered’, they then accuse him having some secret way to funnel their money to him without their knowing (likely through the ‘Jerusalem gift’)! What is it that prompts Paul to continue pursuing them? He likens it to a parent unable to ever give up on their children, painful as it might be. They can’t comprehend a love that gives and never takes.

Paul’s love is like God’s love – it is constant and persistent and unrelenting – even if the recipient of that love is recalcitrant, ungrateful and gullible. Francis Thompson captures the unrelenting pursuit of God for those He loves in his poem ‘The Hound of Heaven’ (1890). Consider the opening stanza, which describes beautifully the confusion, depression and fear of being loved so unconditionally…

“I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;

I fled Him, down the arches of the years;

I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways

Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears

I hid from Him, and under running laughter.

Up vistaed hopes I sped;

And shot, precipitated,

Adown Titanic glooms of chasmèd fears,

From those strong Feet that followed, followed after.

But with unhurrying chase,

And unperturbèd pace,

Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,