My niece has a dog named Raven, a mixed-breed Labrador Retriever and Pit Bull. Although Raven had been abused in her youth, she has now found a happy home. She seems blissfully unaware of the Pit Bull’s reputation for fierceness, and her primary stance toward human beings is “Love me! Validate my existence!”
She expresses this first by sitting in front of you and gazing at you politely. If you do not respond appropriately, she raises a paw and offers it to you. Then if you are the kind of hard-hearted creature who can ignore the paw, she will eventually sit back on her rear and offer you both paws. Few people can resist this last-ditch effort at friendship.
We too need to be loved and to have our existence validated. However, the fundamental authentication of our lives is something amazing: the Incarnation of God in Christ. The God who created all things loved us enough and considered us valuable enough to become one of us. What is more, God doesn’t wait for us to reach out a paw, but on the contrary, always reaches out to us first, even before we have become aware of our need and desire for God.
Like Raven, we may have been abused by life, bruised by the voices of society that tell us we are worthless (because our body is not the right size or shape or color, because our cell-phone does nothing except make phone calls, because we are not perfect, …). Through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, we find our true place in the world and in the family of God as we are drawn into the very life of Christ.
In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us
and sent his Son to be the expiation for our sins.
Beloved, since God loved us so much,
we also ought to love one another.
(1 John 4:10-11)