Hope and Mercy

"The ineffable poverty of Divine, incarnate, crucified Love."

This is the essence of Christianity, the reason for our faith. I don't know if we pay it as much attention as it deserves, but it's there.

How is it that God--the eternal, infinite God whose glory we could never comprehend--how is it that He not only saw fit to create us as his beloved creatures, but to be our Father? We, so small and seemingly worthless, realize that we have no right to diminish our worth if the eternal God saw fit to honor us.
But again, how is it that this omnipotent God loved us with the love of a Father, gave us free will, and risked our rejection (no, knew we would reject Him)? And how is it that he loved us with so deep a patience and so unquenchable a passion that he prepared for centuries to not only help us out of our self-inflicted condition but take on our nature and sufferings? And how is it that this God, having emptied himself of his glory to become one of us and reveal to us the Father, also suffered as the final and perfect Sacrifice?

Is this not the epitome of the word ineffable?

He wants to unite us to Him; he wants to be our all-sufficient Father, to make us a glorious and perfectly one family in Him; to share with us the mysteries of His innermost Love. Is this not unfathomable? And is it not incredibly humbling when we turn to look at our current state? We are all but blind, weak, erratic creatures with perhaps the remnant of a desire for Truth but incapable of reaching it ourselves--incapable of inner righteousness or wisdom or devotion, capable only of longing and weak attempts riddled with confused error. And yet that humble longing is enough for him--he even insistently prods us until that desire begins to awake; he deeply desires to make us his family and will only desist at our final no. And then we truly would be wretched, but wretched of our own accord.

What wondrous Love is this?

And somehow in our wretchedness, there is still an image of God; all is not lost, and, unworthy though we are in the face of such a Father, he is pleased by what goodness still lives within us despite our fallen nature. It may be sorely diminished, but He is patient and, wondrously, understanding. When he sees a heart struggling toward him, he is pleased. And we have been shown that this small goodness within us is a foretaste of our final rest--it is a clue to what we were always meant for and still have the hope of attaining in that final day.

That is the most blessed hope we could have. I almost dare not believe it.