Rooted in Love

What better prayer can we pray for someone than that they become rooted in God's love? Yet this is not the climax of Paul's aspirational prayer in Ephesians 3, 

And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. Ephesians 3: 17-19 

The purpose of Paul’s prayer is that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. Wow! Is that even possible? Paul clearly thinks it is, but how? If you work backwards through the prayer, you can see his train of thought more clearly. To know this love that passes knowledge. Again wow! How can we know a love that is beyond understanding? 

Working backwards again, by having power together with all the saints to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ. The wow factor just keeps coming! How can we grasp the astonishing dimensions of Christ's love? By being rooted and established in love. 

In my devotional, Patience for Patients, I begin with a section of 7 readings on becoming grounded in love.

‘How can we measure God's love? Its height is the height from which Christ stepped down to come from heaven to earth for us. Its depth is the depth to which Christ stooped in carrying our sin. Its width is the span of his arms on the cross, held there not by nails, but by love.

Today may the consciousness of God's vast, deep, unconditional, self-sacrificial love bring us spiritual comfort in the way that a warm blanket brings comfort to our bodies.’

“Oh, the deep, deep love of Jesus! Vast, unfettered, boundless, free,

Rolling as a mighty ocean in its fullness over me.

Underneath me, all around me, is the current of thy love;

Leading onward, leading homeward, to Thy glorious rest above.”

Samuel Trevor Francis