That Kind of Love
Hello friends and welcome back to Abounding In Love! In our last part, we defined love and found that love may not be as complex as we think. Today we define the second word that is relevant in this series - abounding. As always, I am going to be pointing all definitions, despite their origin, back to God. Remember to watch out for our key words that will be in bold text.
The first definition comes from my concordance:
Abound: to be more than enough; to overflow.
Before God gave me the name of this series, He gave me the word love, so naturally I thought this was going to be another one of my one-word series. Then, I did as I always do when He gives me a word, and looked it up in my concordance. My concordance is a small one in the back of my grandmother's Bible and every word doesn't include a definition. Love is one of those words.
So, I thought I could do what I did in my Freedom Series and look for a word that could have a similar meaning to use. That's when I stumbled upon abounding and God began to speak to me. Abounding isn't the same word as love, but it is the amount of love the Lord has for those who love Him. God told me that I could not do a love series without adding a word such as this, because God's love is overflowing and it is more than enough. It's not just love, on our earthly scale, it's abundant love, it's unlimited love, it's everlasting love. It's love that we cannot grasp, it is too lofty for us to obtain, it's too much for us to comprehend.
That kind of love can only be felt between a Creator and His creation. That kind of love creates regardless of the pain that that creation will cause. That kind of love sends a beloved Son down to die to fix that creation's mistakes. That kind of love forgives even the worst trespass. That kind of love, we cannot possess. That kind of love deserves to have a word such as abounding in front of it, although, somehow, abounding feels like it's not enough to describe the love of the Father and Son.
The next two definitions come from Google:
Very plentiful, abundant
to have in large numbers
Through my google search, I found that the word abounding comes from the Latin word abundare which means 'overflow', but if you break up the word: 'Ab' means 'from' and 'undare' means 'surge'. Put them together and you have 'from surge'. That's not all! If you grab the letters unda from abundare, it makes the word 'wave' in Latin. From the surge - wave! But what does that mean exactly?
To find out exactly what to make of that, I googled the word 'wave' - unda. I know what you are thinking, we know what a wave is:
A long body of water curling into an arched form and breaking on the shore.
But, wave also means:
A sudden occurrence of or increase in a phenomenon, feeling or emotion.
An emotion.. where did we find an emotion in this series? LOVE! An increase of love, an unlimited wave of love, an overflowing amount of love. Our God's love is like the ocean, not only in depth, but in the constant breaking of waves, the constant overflowing onto the shore. But, our God's love exceeds the volume of the ocean and is overflowing onto, not the sand, but us. I hear the wordless groans...my cup overflows.
But the gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died by the trespass of the one man, how much more did God's grace and the gift came by the grace of the man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many!
Romans 5:15
Jesus died and hung lifeless on the cross when a Roman soldier pierced Jesus' side with a spear, bringing a sudden flow of blood and water. A sudden occurrence... A flow of water... A wave of love was released... A very undeserved love at that! The events that came just before this flow gave us the keys...
My friends, there is no greater joy to be found than the knowledge of what came before that flow! Jesus died for us. This, as mentioned in the last blog, was the truest display of love.
