Day 1 - The God Who Loves Unfailingly

by Emma Whitworth

London, England

A South Indian Welcome

I want to begin my reflections on God’s unfailing love with a recent experience I had on my travels late last year in India. Throughout my stay, I experienced munificent hospitality that was poured out in countless, small tangible ways. To many of these people I was a stranger, and their expressions of unearned kindness left me in awe.

I think particularly of my experience in the HOPE School of Tharangambadi where, on my arrival, the children lined the sandy path to throw flower petals as I walked through. The Lower Kindergarten then greeted me with paper flowers and shy smiles before performing dances they had been preparing that week. 

It struck me that I hadn’t done anything to earn this generous welcome. And this realisation confronted me. 

If you’re anything like me, on receiving praise, gifts, or love, you instinctively conduct quiet self-assessments to evaluate your worthiness of the care you’ve been shown.

Sometimes I swell with pride, glad that I am receiving the recognition I deserve. Or maybe I shrink back, feeling like an imposter and that the praise is not proportionate to my contribution. At other times I bristle with indignation or frustration, certain I deserved more than I was given. What is consistent across these responses is that the praise and love extended to me by others draws my gaze back to self. I focus on what it says about my worth, my effort, or what I think I deserve, rather than receiving it as a gift from the one who offers it.

My experience at the school showed me how quickly I turn praise, gifts, or love inward, and how, once centred on myself, the gift itself becomes fragile – its impact distorted and encumbered by my own preoccupations. 

The Prodigal Son and The Promethean Myth

Read: Luke 15:11-32

Jesus’ parable of the Prodigal Son exposes this human tendency with startling clarity. Both sons, in different ways, try to separate the gift from the giver and to claim the inheritance as distinctly their own. For the younger son, he feels in order to claim his fortune he must take the inheritance away from his father and pursue his own journey of self-affirmation. For the older son, he feels he must work and labour for his inheritance to feel that it is truly earned, thus establishing it as separate from the father’s generosity. 

Many of us have become comfortable and familiar with the kind of love that is earned. We feel a temporary sense of safety and security because we are convinced that if it has been worked for, it is truly ours. And so, in small subconscious moments, we play a game with God, bargaining with Him in order to feel like we have earned the ability to approach Him favourably or get the things that we want. 

My reflections have coincided with my reading of Thomas Merton’s book The New Man, in which he talks about the “Promethean myth,” and how throughout Greek mythology there is a continuous battle between the gods and man. The story of Prometheus is the story of a titan who stole fire from the gods to give to man and was subsequently punished for eternity. The myths often place people in opposition to the gods - with humans needing to outwit, bargain with or beguile the gods to achieve what they want and progress. 

We see this “Promethean myth” proliferated throughout our world and even in our Christian landscape. 

Our mistrust of God and of one another corners us into constant calculation and self-protection, convincing us that by earning or bargaining for love we make it more secure, when in truth we only weaken it. Love is flattened into something transactional, left vulnerable to the failings of our fallible nature.

A Love That Holds, Even When We Cannot

As the sons in the parable discover, their endeavours leave them empty and exhausted. They were looking to themselves to be their own sources of life. However, they found that they were a deficient source that soon ran dry. This is the nature of earned love. It requires constant maintenance, demanding proof and effort.

However, with God’s love, it is precisely its unconditional nature that makes it freely given and impossible to earn. The parable concludes with the father speaking to his eldest son saying: “Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours” - Luke 15:31. In these penultimate lines, the father reminds his son that everything he has is already accessible to him. 

You don’t climb your way to the table. You take your place at it. God’s love is not a riddle to solve or a wage to earn. It is a gift to receive. 

Unfailing Love Changes Us

This love has both the power to change us and the lives of people around us. However, for it to take a transformational space in our life, we must allow ourselves to be exposed. We cannot pretend any longer. The mask must slip. The curtains must close. The show is over.

“The single most important thing I have learned in over thirty years of study of how love produces healing is that love is transformational only when it is received in vulnerability.” 

― David G. Benner, Surrender to Love: Discovering the Heart of Christian Spirituality

The surest sign that we have encountered this love is the generative work it does within us. When we have met God’s love, we are freed from self-preoccupation and we are equipped to love others with the same non-demanding, non-calculating generosity we ourselves have received. We no longer need others to fulfil something in us; instead, we are able to embrace their “otherness,” and care from a place where our cup is already full.

My experience of hospitality in India has been a reminder of God’s love. In the kindness of strangers, I saw how quickly I try to turn love inward, measuring it, questioning my worthiness, or scrambling to figure out what I “deserve.” 

In all of this, I have been reminded of these words by Thomas Merton: 

“St Paul saw so clearly: salvation belongs to the order of love, of freedom and of giving. It is not ours if it is conquered, only if it is freely received as it is freely given”.

- Thomas Merton, The New Man

Reflection Questions:

1. Where do you recognise transactional patterns in your relationship with God?

2. In what moments do you feel most tempted to prove yourself or to perform - before God or others? What would it look like for you to loosen your grip on performance, bargaining, or self-protection?

3. How might the way you relate to others change by truly trusting that God’s love for you is steady and secure?

Today I will:

1. Today I will centre myself in God’s unfailing love for me.

2. Today I will choose honesty over ‘being impressive’ because I know when I am weak, He is strong. 

3. Today I will choose to love someone who is different from me because I am drawing from a deep and unfailing well. 

About the Author:

Emma Whitworth is part of the East London Church and was baptised when she was 15. She works as a Reporting Officer for an international charity supporting projects in Haiti, South Sudan, and Uganda. She loves being outdoors and moving whenever she can, and finds joy in cooking for others - often using dinner party guests as unknowing guinea pigs to test new recipes (with mixed results). She hopes for a church marked by ‘shalom’ - one that cares for every part of the body and gives special honour to those often overlooked.