I love you!



We have had a reason to listen to a Country and Western Dolly Parton song recently, entitled “I love you to the moon and back”. A little while later, after listening to the song, there was a touching advertisement on the television about a little boy getting a Christmas present for his mum. The advert shows the little lad giving a note to the shop keeper which says, “I want the moon for my mum”. The shop was Pandora and the gift was a silver crescent moon on a chain. The final scene shows the boy’s mum receiving the gift (including the little note) and sharing the love between her and her son. Of course, there are many other jewellers around, but this advert caught my attention.
 
Like the song and the advert, the inference is that the love expressed is so big, it is like the distance from the moon and back. The actual distance the moon is from the earth, measured with my B & Q tape measure, is 238,854 miles, so the return distance is 477,708 miles, quite a long way until you look at it in light years.
 
Now, a light year is the distance that the speed of light travels in one year. If you multiply  186,282 miles (the speed of light in one second) by the number of seconds in a year, you will come up with the answer. However, to save you the trouble and brain space it is 5.88 trillion miles! So just one light year away from earth is a mind-blowing distance. For further information, light travels from earth to the moon in just 1.282 seconds!!
 
The lesson on cosmic distances is now over; thank goodness I hear you cry! But the thing I learned from all this is that our love is measured in simple terms, like the song says, “To the moon and back”. But look at the vastness of space, how far is that! Then go one step further and think about eternity. You might then start to see just how much is God’s love for you. His love goes on through into timeless eternity and as Ecclesiastes 3:11 puts it, “God has placed eternity in our hearts”.
 
So to experience the fullness of God and His love, we have, maybe, to think in bigger terms than we can imagine. As Ephesians 3:18 says, “May we have power, together with all the Saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ …….”