The phrase “Better than I deserve” cultivates a spirit of gratitude we all need.
A lullaby we like to sing our kids at nap and bedtime is the song “Perfect,” by Ed Sheeran. It was the first dance at our wedding and makes for a lovely sleepy time song. The last line is, “I don’t deserve this, you look perfect tonight.”
On my wedding day, dancing with my husband, surrounded by family and friends, I didn’t deserve the love around me. We are all born into the world with the stain of Original Sin. The best any of us deserve is, honestly, hell. We deserve the separation from God humanity inherently carries. Yet, Christ chose to give His life so we could have better than we deserve. He chose to allow us the opportunity to join Him in Heaven, even though we can never deserve it.
Love doesn’t care about deserving.
When God created Man, we were created in perfect harmony. Sin introduced a divide than became ingrained in human nature. The best any of us can deserve by that nature is separation from God. Yet, He chose to love us. Love does not care about deserving. It cares about giving the best it has, even if it receives nothing in return.
A husband loves his wife and a wife loves her husband unconditionally. On our wedding days, we do not say we will love and cherish one another if X. There are not conditions to reciprocate the sacrifices we will make in marriage. Our love is not contingent on love from the other. We promise to give each other our best, no matter what the other gives us.
When I hold my sleepy children and say, “I don’t deserve this” I know it’s true. How God decided to bless me with two beautiful souls to love and cherish and raise, I will never understand. Of course parenthood is hard. There is plenty of love from a mother and father that is not immediately “repaid” by children. But it doesn’t matter. I don’t need my children to do anything to deserve my love. They have it because they are my children, and I love them more than anything in the world.
If a fallen human can love like that, how much more does our Heavenly Father love us? How much more love does He want to give us, no matter what we deserve? And how much more should we be able to trust in His love than in the love we trust on earth?
