Last summer, I read Tim Keller’s “The Meaning of Marriage.”

Not that I’m thinking of getting married soon,

but it’s always good to plan ahead.²

One thing I’m not particularly happy about is that even after reading something really good, I’m quick to forget it.

Yet one thing that's stuck with me from that book is Keller’s definition of love.

He says that love isn’t a feeling, but rather a commitment.

When you feel that you really love someone, of course it’s easy to show them affection and take them out to a nice dinner.

So Keller says that our actions should also back our "commitment" even when we don’t "feel" it.

That second case is the harder one for sure.

love?

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It’s been a couple of years since I’ve added the Google Photos widget to my phone’s home screen.

So every day, I see a new photo collection that Google has made for me.

And at first, it was just a pleasant surprise.

To see a photo from two, four, fifteen years ago today.

But now, there’s an element of excitement as I think about what the widget is going to show me today.

Many times, Google will show me a picture from when my brother and I were just babies.

And when I see these photos, I see my young parents.

How much love and affection they have in their eyes when they look at my brother and I.

It all makes sense why Mom still sees us as her little babies.

And it’s hard to describe this feeling I get when I look at the love in my young parents’ eyes.

It’s a bit of melancholy, mixed with gratitude.

But when I see them in these photos,

and think about their love for me,

It spurs me to love them even more now.

To understand how much my parents have selflessly loved me moves me to have a deeper love and appreciation for them.

I had a sudden thought as I was laying in bed the other night that this must be a reflection of God’s love for us.

My parents loved me before I was even conscious.

In those pictures that I see, I recognize the baby in the photos as myself, but I have no recollection of those times.

Yet, I can visibly see how much my parents adored and loved me.

Similarly, I was always taught growing up in church that God has loved us before we were even conceived.

As it goes,

Jeremiah 1:5 NIV

My parents have wonderfully upheld Keller’s definition of love.

I’m sure there were so many moments where they didn’t "feel" much love for me.

I was a goofy kid who needed a lot of discipline.

Yet my Mom always prepared a warm dinner for my brother and I, and my Dad never failed to miss a day of family tennis.

Even when their emotions didn’t “feel” it, when they said they loved us,

they committed to it with their actions.

Double kisses

So when I think about God’s love through the lens of my parents’ love for me,

loving me even before I knew myself,

it spurs me to love him more now.

And it seems kinda selfish that I’m moved towards deeper love just because I’ve confirmed that someone has deeply loved me first.

But I think that’s just what parental love is.

It’s a fact that they knew me for so much longer.

And it’s a different type of love than the love I have with my friends or the love I'll have with my spouse,

because the context in which this love is derived is fundamentally different.

I knew my friends (and probably my future wife) at relatively similar times that they knew me.

So this love that I have with my parents, and with God, must be a love of a different nature.

A love that was never (and cannot be) equal to begin with.

I believe God has given us parental love as a shadow³ of what His love is for us.

And it’s hard to describe this feeling.

It's definitely humbling.

With a mix of gratitude and reverence.

To know that God has loved us so deeply since before we knew ourselves, and that

Romans 8:39 NIV