Life Through the Lens: Throwing away the key

This post was contributed by Kevin Schrapel, and is the author’s personal opinion.

They are often seen on bridge railings and safety fences: locked declarations of love.

Two people declare their love for each other by locking the padlocks together in a public place and then disposing of the key, often throwing it into the river below.

On some bridges in Paris, the “love capital of the world”, authorities have banned the practice because there are so many padlocks that their weight could cause the bridge to become unstable – so much love!

So much love, yet compared to the love of God for you, me, and all the people of the world, it is like nothing.

In the Bible, a description of God tells us “God is love” (1 John 4:8).

It is like God, in love, is locking himself to humanity and throwing away the key because he knows in his heart he is never going to leave us.

His love is forever locked to you, me and all peoples before now, and forever (Matthew 28:20).

Most famous of all passages in the Bible, John 3:16 shows that Jesus died for all: “for God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

This is God’s act of “throwing away the key”.

Sadly, so often we take a hacksaw to that bond of love and, in an act of declaring “I want to do my thing”, cut ourselves free.

We ignore God, claim he doesn’t exist and blame him for not doing things “my way”.

Yet even then God, in love, still holds out his unshakable, unbroken love with a never-ending wish that we will let him mend the cut-apart relationship, and again be locked into his love.

The rusted-on padlocks in the image bear testimony that they have been there a long time; God’s love never gets rusty.

Each day, his love is like new and each day he waits for us to come to him and say, “here, father, I realise I made a mistake; I can’t get along so well on my own; please mend where I broke away, and lock our two hearts together again; let me know the joy of living my life surrounded by your great love and the love of your son Jesus, who through his death for me on that cross, makes possible my joining to God the father”.

It’s not that hard.

Talk to God about it and enjoy what happens.

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