Since I saw some months ago that Michael Card had written a new book, I’ve been waiting for it to arrive. It’s not because Michael Card wrote it, though I love his music and the other couple of his books that I’ve read. It’s not even because I need another good book to read. (I have a few on the go!) It’s because Card has written the book about a single word from the Hebrew Bible, a word that I’ve fallen in love with over the years and researched and knew I still didn’t fully understand. I was eager to explore more deeply the meaning of this mysterious word that, some might say, is the most important word in the Hebrew Scriptures. The word is hesed—translated, among other things, as “lovingkindness” or “faithful love”—and the title of Michael Card’s book is Inexpressible: Hesed and the mystery of God’s Lovingkindness.

The book arrived a couple of weeks ago, and I’ve been savoring every line. In my view, it’s worth buying the book for the brilliant cover which, in itself, fuels meditation and leads me into worship, and for the appendices which bring together all the verses in which this word is used and the various ways the word is translated, allowing me to soak more deeply on my own. And that’s without all the wonderful writing in between about the richly layered meaning of hesed, the God of hesed, and the magnificent mystery of finding ourselves objects of hesed.The combination of serious research and theology and beautiful, accessible writing led me, in each chapter, into worship of our God of hesed who loves us in such a magnificent way that it is inexpressible in ordinary language and needs this special, multilayered word, hesed, which itself defies a tidy definition, to give us some still-inadequate way to speak of this love.

As I’ve read Inexpressible, it has also added another layer to the lines I wrote a few weeks ago:

“God’s love is so big and his desire to draw us into it so great that no single metaphor is sufficient to communicate that love. God circles and doubles back, revealing himself in Scripture in all the different roles in the obstetrical drama: as mother, father, husband, midwife, even baby whom we, along with Mary, are graced to carry.” 

God picturing himself for us in all these different roles is another manifestation of his hesed.  God’s love simply can’t be contained in a single metaphor or definition, though it has been ultimately expressed in the living Word, Jesus, the embodiment of hesed.

The inability of a single word or metaphor to contain God’s love makes it all the more important that we savour each small glimpse of God’s love that God gives us in each of the many different metaphors. Each may only be a taste of something far beyond our comprehension or ability to imagine, but it is a taste, one more small way that God invites us to know him and settle into his love a little more deeply.

We all have our bruises and fractures, and each one of those wounds needs tending in a different way. And so this God who heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds, this God who leaves the ninety-nine to search for the one lost sheep, does that for the broken parts of us as well, coming to each hurting part of us in the way that that part can most easily receive God’s love and the tender care and comfort that it needs. God comes to the small and frightened part of us as a mother who can’t forget the child she has borne and tenderly holds the child and wipes away her tears, and as a father who defends and protects and affirms. He comes to the lonely part, the insecure and unchosen, as a bridegroom who chooses and cherishes and delights in the beauty of his bride. God moves back and forth between the images in Scripture, inviting us to come and receive love in whatever way we need it just now, always welcoming and calling us to return and make our home in that love.

This week I’ve been back in the image offered to us in Acts 17:28, “In him we live and move and have our being. . . We are his offspring.” In this picture, we’re unborn babes, living and moving in the One who has brought us into being and sustains us moment by moment as a mother does her unborn babe. We are separate persons, yet utterly dependent and given all we need for life and growth.

I first awakened to the significance of this picture some years ago through a dream. In it, I found myself bicycling in four-lane traffic.  I sensed God inviting me to rest in his love, and responded that I wanted to but didn’t know how in the midst of the traffic. He called me to come and see. I found myself still pedaling my bike, though the traffic had disappeared and I was surrounded by love as though it were some sort of amniotic fluid, though not liquid. It was easy to pedal, easy to breathe, easy to rest. Realizing that there was no need to continue my frantic efforts, and wanting to explore this new space, I stopped pedaling and got off my bike. I found I could push out in all directions and remain surrounded and held in the love, neither liquid nor solid, yet not intangible either. It held me. I sensed God encouraging me to push out and explore, to try to find the limits of the love that conceived me and carries me, sustaining me in being. I might be unaware of it, but I cannot change it. My whole life and self is held in this everlasting love. 

“Your hesed, O LORD, reaches to the heavens,

your faithfulness to the skies.” (Psalm 36:5)

“Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good,

his hesedendures forever.” (Psalm 136:1)

What difference might in make in your day to remember that you are living it sustained and surrounded by the hesed of God?