Some of you have never met Lucy. She’s our family dog. I never really thought we’d be a dog family, but we are. And Queen Anne is such an interesting place to have a dog. There are a lot of dogs here. And there are a lot of dog owners. And I’d have to say I think there are a lot of introverted dog owners here.

At least, I think that after countless trips around the hill with the dog, and the large number of other people with dogs who call softly from across the street, “Can we come over and visit?” But once the dogs are entertaining each other, almost all of the communication is through the dogs:

“Oh, Fido, don’t get tangled up in Lucy’s leash, now.”

“Lucy, how old are you?”

“I wonder where Lucy lives?!”

Drives me crazy! After a few minutes of being totally ignored by my fellow human being, I want to say, “Do you notice who is attached to the other end of Lucy’s leash?! Hell-oo!”

Lucy is a great dog. A black lab who is almost four now. And like lots of labs, she just has that soft look about her that says, “I’m really not a paranoid, schizophrenic, yappy, biting kind of dog. Please feel free to come and pet me.” And people do.

Anne and I have a little Monday (day off) morning routine: walk Dana over to McClure, go for a run, and end up at Starbucks to have coffee together. We tie Lucy up outside, and we go in. Then we sit in a window seat and talk for a half hour or so.

Usually in that half hour at least five or six people will walk by on the sidewalk, and see Lucy sitting there. You can see the thought process: “Pretty dog. I always liked labs. She looks gentle. Her tail is wagging. I think I can risk it.” Then they walk over and pet her, and she loves it. Five or six people. And Lucy just sits there and soaks it up.

As we watched this unfold again and again a couple of weeks ago, Anne said something that I liked so much, I wrote it down:

“It must be nice to be the object of such affection.”

The object of such affection.

Last week when we looked at Isaiah 40, we entered a new section of Isaiah. Now we are reading prophecy that seems to deal with the people of Israel in the 6th century BC, after Jerusalem has been taken by the Babylonians, after leaders and key people have been carried away in captivity to Babylon. And the word from Isaiah has become much more personal, more compassionate.

It’s not just God’s “Trust me!” which dominates so much of the first 39 chapters. Last week we heard God saying,

“Comfort my people, I will be with them.”

That’s where this morning’s passage begins. It’s one of my favorite passages to read when I am in a hard time, or when someone else is. I often read it with people who are in difficult circumstances because it so vividly brings the point: God is with us in hard times.

It’s a reality verse…it doesn’t say that there won’t be hard times. Just that God is with us.

“Don’t be afraid. I made you (generally), I formed you (specifically), I have redeemed you (claimed), I have called you by name (recognized you, made you family) and you are mine.”

Great reminders. But then comes this great word of assurance:

“When you pass through the waters, I will be with you.”

I’ve read this passage with friends who have been in accidents…with people who have lost parents…with people whose spouse no longer wants to be married to them…with people whose business is going under.

When we are in these situations, we are in some fast-moving waters, we are in the midst of the flames…these are hard spots. We never wanted to be there, we never anticipated it, we may have had little to do with ending up there…but…God will be with you.

That’s the promise. “I will be with you.” Not always extraction from the situation, but always God’s presence. We covered that much last week in Isaiah 40.

But chapter 43 gives us something else so new, so profound, so simple…that every time I tried to go somewhere else, this just kept coming back up:

“You are precious in my sight, and honored, and I love you.”

God says: I love you. There it is, naked and simple. Do you want to know how God feels about the people he’s created, formed, redeemed, named, brought into family? Read Isaiah 43. The voice of God Almighty, creator of heaven and earth says: I love you.

I believe it’s what we’ve always wanted to hear, to understand, to believe. Could God love me? You are the object of God’s deepest affection.

Brennan Manning tells a story about a priest he knew named Edward Farrell. Father Farrell was in his native Ireland to see his only surviving uncle, Uncle Seamus, who was turning 80 years old. The two of them went for a walk early in the morning on his birthday, on the shores of Lake Killarney. They stood and watched the sun come up, not saying a word, just watching the colors change and glow across the water. Suddenly the 80-year-old uncle turned and began to skip down the road with a beaming, radiant smile on his face.

The nephew said, “Uncle, you look really happy.”

And Uncle said, “I am, lad.”

“Want to tell me why?”

“Yes. You see, me Abba (me Father) is very fond of me.”

“You are precious in my sight, and honored, and I love you.” Are we not dying to hear those words? We want them from friends, from spouses…but even more at the core of us, we want to hear them from God. To know them deep inside our souls.

A friend of mine told me years ago that every pastor really had only one or two sermons…the same one or two things were worked out over and over, in different ways.

And the friend told me he thought one of mine was simply, “God loves you.” At first I was a little offended by that. I thought, “Gosh, that’s just so simplistic. Surely I’m more sophisticated than that, surely there’s more to it.” But the older I get, the more comfortable I am with that sermon.

In fact, this week I remembered a moment from the first week I came to pastor here at Bethany. I was in this sanctuary, and I had a vision or dream of some kind. I imagined myself standing here in this exact pulpit, talking to all of you, and saying these words:

Maybe I’ll have to stand here for the next 25 years and say this same thing over and over: God loves you. Do you understand?! Do you hear that? No limits, no conditions, nothing…just, the God of the universe has chosen to love you.

It’s true. It’s true whether you’ve known it for years, or whether it’s just starting to dawn on you. It’s true on days you believe it and on days that you don’t. It’s true when you feel it, and when you don’t.

God loves you…and me. You are the object of God’s deepest affection. How do I know? Remember the Romans verse (6:5):

“God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us.”

And the thing is, so much of the time…we don’t believe it. It’s too good to be true. There’s no free lunch. I have to earn it. God says,

“No, I love you.”

Why won’t we believe it? Many of you grew up with parents who could never express their love. Many of us grew up not even knowing that many times our motivation to please our folks or family was so strong that we tried to achieve something big, academically or career-wise or with the size of a bank account or a house, so that we might actually hear these words from our parents, “Wow. You’ve done so well. Now I love you.”

It’s not so different from how we think God works. “I have to accomplish something great for the kingdom so that God will say,

"'Well done, good and faithful servant…now I love you.'"

No. “You are precious and honored and I love you.” This was spoken to Israel, to people who had spent centuries being disobedient and rebellious, just a small nation in a world of power and stature. They had earned nothing. But they received God’s love.

Why won’t we believe it? Almost every voice in our lives contradicts the message that we are loved people. The Enemy’s pack of lies is reinforced everywhere. Books, movies, magazines, people.

“Joe Millionaire” woos the girl and whispers, “I love you.” But he doesn’t, it’s just a charade.

We think our companies love us, and they do…until the numbers are down. We compare and compare and compare ourselves to others and we’re comfortable if we compare favorably…and crushed when we don’t.

Within the church, we keep saying, “For God so loved the world…” and we all nod and affirm it. But to say, “God so loved me …Patti, Sarah, Stewart, Dan” is a whole different story. We have a hard time saying it. All the time there’s a voice inside of us that whispers, “You’re not worthy of love.” That’s not God’s voice.

The tender voice of God says, “I love you.” We immediately think, “That couldn’t really be true.”

Why won’t we believe it? Because what if God knew what we were really like? What if God knew all of our thoughts and conversations, all of our temptations and weaknesses…he would not say that.

No, actually he knows exactly and says, “You are precious and honored and I love you.” Why won’t we believe it? It’s the good news which seems too good to be true. There’s no good reason for it, which may be the best definition of love there is. It’s unexplainable. But you are the object of God’s affection.

What if we believed it? It would change everything. Absolutely everything. What if the foundational piece of our identity was actually built not on self-esteem, positive thinking or anything else, but on this truth?

Years ago the Trappist monk and writer and philosopher Thomas Merton asked, “Who am I?” And after years of wrestling he responded, “I am one loved by Christ.”

The object of God’s deepest affection. If we truly believed it, it would change everything. Everything. Our world would be a different place, because how do you resist love that is absolutely unreasonable?

If we knew that we were loved…we’d have nothing to prove. We wouldn’t have to tell people who we know. We wouldn’t have to name drop. We wouldn’t need to impress people with what we had done. We wouldn’t need to gloat. We could reach out to people who were hurting without worrying about protecting ourselves. We could be affirming to others, knowing that our “Abba is so fond of me.”

When our oldest son Jesse was a baby, Anne and I took him down to the campus at SPU, to the huge grass lawn right there on Third West. It was a hot summer afternoon, and we sat down in the middle of the lawn. Jesse wasn’t walking yet, but he crawled like there was no tomorrow. As soon as we sat him down, he started motoring away from us. After about ten yards of furious crawling, he stopped and looked back, just to see if we were still there, if we were still watching. Then he got a big grin on his face, and took off again, maybe twenty more yards…and stopped and turned to see if we were still there.

As long as he knew that, as long as he had that one anchor, everything was good.

If we actually believed this one truth: “God loves me,” for ourselves…our whole world would be a different place.

Some of you have read about a man named Robertson McQuilkin. For a number of years he was the president of what is now Columbia International University in South Carolina. About 1980, McQuilkin’s wife Muriel began to show the signs of Alzheimer’s disease. In 1990, McQuilkin left his position as a university president to care for Muriel. In 1993, she quit recognizing him, but still lived for another 10 years, cared for by her husband. Several interviews have been published with McQuilkin over the years, which I have clipped out and saved. I ran across another piece this week.

In his last years at the college, McQuilkin hired a caretaker for Muriel while he went to work during the day. The caretaker allowed Muriel to do as much as she could, or wanted, within safe boundaries. As I read some of their incredibly touching story this week, I was struck by Robertson McQuilkin’s love for Muriel. Steadfast, through deep waters and hot fires he remained with her. What could be deeper water or hotter fire than walking with your spouse and best friend of many years, and seeing them slowly slip away? We have some friends in our community who are walking through these deep waters. Robert had this amazing love for Muriel.

But I was even more struck by Muriel’s love for Robertson. Two things in particular stood out to me. One is this picture: As Muriel’s mental capabilities steadily declined, naturally her speaking ability also diminished. At one point, she really was not talking to Robertson anymore, except that for a long time she was able to say just one thing, which she said over and over: “I Love You.” Many, many times a day. And that one simple sentence sustained him through many hard times and dark days.

Secondly…the McQuilkins lived near the college campus. It was about a mile roundtrip from their home to Robertson’s office. Some days, Muriel would walk that route with her caregiver as many as ten times. And on some of those nights, when Robertson was home from work and helped Muriel get ready for bed, he would find her feet bruised and bloodied...from so much walking. When he told their family doctor about it, the doctor cried. All he could say was “Such love.”

Imagine. That God would say to us, over and over, “I love you.” Imagine, that God would love us with love like that and more. That God’s Son Jesus Christ would be bruised and bloodied, and even die…out of love for you and me. Amazing…that WE… would be the object of such affection. Let’s pray.