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Until - There are no conditions on love, as to whether it will be given or received.
Some words do well on their own. “Why?” implies that there is a context in which it makes sense even as a one-word question. However, we can only work rationally with “until” when it is placed with a condition, like “Until sunrise, the sky is dark.” We make good conscious use of “until” when we convey specific conditions that must be met before stated consequences will follow. But if we do not take care, we might put conditions on actions that do not require them, or assume that some significant relational interactions with others, including God, are conditional when they are not.
We would not want to be the sort of person who, until others first greet us, only then will we greet them. But without proper reflection, it is possible to hold others to unacknowledged conditions before we will act positively towards them. Much worse than that is when someone implicitly accepts the belief that we cannot be loved until we earn it by what we do or say.
God’s love for us does not entail “until” which is very good news for us. We are loved unconditionally, though many of us may secretly harbor a belief that we cannot be loved until after we have corrected all our faults or some wrongful behavior. Because so much of our lives are impacted by conditional transactions, we can unconsciously use the same mental attitude in our relations with others and with God as we do when acquiring merchandise: not receiving what we desire until we have paid for it. We all want and need to be respected and loved for who we are, but none of the small or significant loving interactions that are essential in life are the direct consequences of our earning, deserving, or otherwise meeting the kind of conditions that are related to “until.”
We do not like it when someone asks us for assistance of some kind and then acts as though they must give us something in return. For us, any expression of sincere gratitude would be welcome, but not required. In a similar way, it wholly inappropriate to make a request of God with a notion that until we do something to merit whatever we seek, we will not receive anything. Not that God could be disappointed or offended by our mistaken belief, but if we are fully sensitive to our manner of asking, we might become aware of thinking of God like a good friend who would say, “I am glad to do this for you, you owe me nothing.”
We are encouraged to ask for what we need, but it is wholly respectful of God to include some quiet listening before we conclude our request. In such a moment of peacefulness, we will likely receive the equivalent of “Thank you for trusting me. That is all that is required.”
Last Updated 3/29/2025