The sight took my breath away. As I was getting back into my car, out of the corner of my eye, I saw what I thought was a Papuan man hunched over. But as he turned around and walked into view, I realized his body was grotesquely deformed. He had legs and arms that seemed somewhat normal, but his spine was curled into a hump, overtaking where his stomach and torso should have been. His head faced the ground and was crowned with tight gray curls. He only wore a gourd, as some Papuan men do, so every inch of his grotesque torso, or lack of it, was revealed. The sight so shocked me that I got into my car and burst into tears. I honestly could not believe he had lived so long like that. It broke my heart.

All of a sudden, I wondered if that’s how God felt about us. I wondered if, as God gazed down upon our hearts after the fall of man, He saw something so grotesque, so far from the beautiful thing it was meant to be, that it broke His heart too. Sometimes it helps me to imagine in just the smallest sense what God’s heart must feel toward us. Somehow that makes his love come alive to me. It helps me want to love others. That Papuan man helped expand my picture of God’s love. And I pray that all of us

“being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, 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 3:17b-19