how he loves

We sang an amazing song yesterday at Friday Night Live, called "How He Loves" by the David Crowder Band, and I felt like such a noob to have heard it for the first time yesterday. Nevertheless, the lyrics touched me like crazy.

Have a listen&look yourself (embedding was disabled by request):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWgeUrD4MHI

You know, sometimes, (I don't know about y'all but) I feel like I need to prove to certain people why they should love me - or at least care about me and who I am - and why they should continue to love me. I don't mean that in the narcissistic way, like "BOW DOWN. LOVE ME" type way, but just as in, why they should give a whit about me.

We all have insecurities. I have many.

And yet, despite these insecurities that we admit to ourselves privately (or perhaps we don't even do that), it's like we have to put up this constant display of our best qualities so that we can show why we matter, why we're important, why we should be given that research opportunity or job, why we should be friends, why we should be dated and married, why we should have that space in that time, why we should live. Even when we are asked for our insecurities, we have to pick an answer that actually subtly doubles as a positive - constructive self-criticism that shows false humility and supposed perseverance.

And for whom? The world - from that professor or employer reviewing your resume to the person you could potentially or will date and marry to the random people passing you by as you try to survey or flyer to them to even your parents, who technically are supposed to have unconditional love for you (and they do, but we all know what it's like to feel like we should/need to please our parents).

But there is something magical about God's love for us.

For one, we didn't really ask for it. He just gave it to us. We love Him because He loved us first: He proved faithful to us, He listened to our cries and our prayers, He brought Himself down in the form of His Son Jesus as lowly man to die for our inadequacies. It's like SO ironic because we're trying so hard to prove to others - other humans - why they should pick us and why they need us for their endeavours and why they should love us...but God - this hujungous almighty omniscient/omnipotent/omnipresent being - is always fighting for our love. To show us why we should pick Him, why we should need Him in our seemingly complex and detailed plans, why we should love Him.

I love how the song starts off with the lyrics, "He is jealous for me," because normally, jealousy is treated as something negative, but in this case, in God's case - it's something beautiful.

They say that sometimes, when you like someone, it's ironically touching when you see the other person exhibit jealousy for you. Of course, when the jealousy turns into possessiveness and then psychotic, scary behaviors, then that's a little...bad. But in general, a healthy level of jealousy is cute to see, because it shows that you actually matter enough to that person for that person to want to hold onto you.

Isn't it funny that God wants to hold onto us so badly - us out of >6 billion people in this world?

I am lacking and flawed. I get food stuck in my teeth quite a bit; I sometimes wear socks with holes in the heel; I drool sometimes when I sleep and I sleep too much; I fail at handling umbrellas, taking statistics exams, folding laundry and baking, talking about myself for official things like interviews and resumes and testimonies, singing within a normal girl's range, being patient, loving myself like He loves me.

But oh.

How He loves us so.