“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.” John 13:34
On July 21, 1998 the entire world changed. The color of the sky was no longer the same hue. The ticking of a clock no longer measured time the same way. The din of traffic was distorted, and the smell of air was different. The fundamental state of the planet had been altered.
Maybe you don’t remember it that way. Maybe it was just a regular old day in your home. But on July 21, 1998, Anna Maisen Rader was born, and my world would never be the same. This love was a new love. A love that would live inside of me both literally in my DNA and figuratively in my heart. A love that knew no bounds nor conditions. A love that seemed almost more than a human could hold.
Brandi Carlisle has a song entitled “The Mother,” which beautifully describes the love of mother for child. The most endearing line in the song to me is this…“All the wonders I have seen, I will see a second time from inside of the ages through your eyes.” This was true for our first Christmas together. I experienced the story of Mary and the birth of Jesus in a profound and novel way that year. There was a new awe for that first Christmas and the birth of the Child who not only changed the entire arc of His mother’s world but literally the fundamental state of the universe.
Maybe the most surprising thing that has ever happened to me occurred on March 27, 2001. Abigail Lee Rader was born, and somehow my capacity to love stretched and expanded in the matter of moments from something I thought was as full as it could be to something that doubled in size.
And then on July 14, 2003, the thing I thought might be possible proved absolutely true, and the expanse of my love stretched again when Lauren Allyn Rader arrived in the world.
The thing is, I thought that was it. There had to be a maximum capacity for love, but when Anna married this fall I learned the same lesson yet again. We are born with an incredible capacity to love. This is how Jesus loves each of us and how He loves all of us. There is no end. There is no maximum. On the night there was no room in the inn, a Babe would be the One to put flesh to love and show us how to love one another.
