I’ll confess. I loved Whitney Houston. I have loved Whitney since I was little, 5 or 6 years old. I wanted to sing because of Whitney. My whole desire to sing was born from watching her sing. I love the lyrics from her song, “You were loved”. The chorus goes like this: You were loved by someone Touched by someone Held by someone Meant something to someone Loved somebody Touched somebody’s heart Along the way You can look back and say (mm) You were loved (yes you were) Okay, this post is not really about Whitney (though I could talk about her for a while). That’s not really what this is about. For most people, there is some truth in those words. We can relate. We may have grown up in loving homes, or had a caring teacher. Mom and Dad may have been affectionate in showing their love for us, or not! Most of us have loved someone, even if we later thought they didn’t deserve our love. We’ve been there for someone and they’ve touched our hearts along the way. I grew up in a loving home. Of course, we had our own share of issues, but I knew my family loved me, especially my dad. I was a daddy’s girl. I was the first girl after two boys. I enjoyed my dad’s attention and affection. I enjoyed being doted upon. I was loved! For others, you may not have felt loved. I am very aware that life may have been hard and just difficult and void of love. I know there are people who did not ever experience any display of love, at least, not in the obvious way many may have experienced love. I sympathize and really wish I could change every sad story. My heart aches when I think of children who have no awareness of love being extended to them. If you ever want to get me to tears, all you need to do is show me some injustice or a situation where a child is unloved. It breaks my heart! But there is good news even for the one who feels unloved. There is someone who loves you more than you can imagine. You are loved! You are cherished! You are thought about constantly by someone who is completely taken by you! He’s loved you, loves you and always will. It’s Abba. He dreamed you up before he created you. I love reading the account of creation in Genesis. It talks about how God created everything by speaking it into existence. “Let there be light”, “Let the waters be separated”… and so on. But when it gets to the part where he decides to make man, he does something totally different. It talks about him first of all making us in his very own image! Wow! He wanted us to be like him, look like him, act like him! But the part that intrigues me the most is that when God made man, he got his hands dirty. He picked up the dirt with his own hands, shaped and molded Adam to be just the way he had envisioned. He didn’t speak man into being. Now the evidence is clear that it wasn’t a lack of ability as demonstrated from earlier creation. No! He chose to make man with his own hands. His own hands designed Adam’s arms, his ribs, his chest, his nose, his lips, his eyes, every last detail was handcrafted by God! Have you ever carved wood? I remember woodworking class in high school. I enjoyed it for all of 30 minutes. It is tedious work. It takes time, detail and care. You have to first saw out the wood (and we did not have power tools)! You then had to chisel slowlyyyyyyy. This was more tedious if you were making something curved! After hours or even days of doing that, then you had to sand it to make it smooth. I remember my teacher sending me back to sand at least 3 or 4 times because when I thought I was done, he apparently had higher standards for me. Then we had to polish the pieces to give it that shine of a finished product. See, I had to do all this to get a good grade. The thing is that God didn’t have to. Now, just put yourself in my shoes for one minute. If I had the power to speak my project to life, em, you may love woodworking and all, but I on the other hand, would have exercised my verbal creation powers. I would have run to the nearest bathroom and called my project to life like that! But God had that choice. He used it in other things. But when it was time to make people, he opted for the longer, tedious, dirty, labor intensive option! He wanted to enjoy the process. He wanted to be involved in every detail. He handcrafted us for his pleasure. I’ve got much more to say about you being loved but for now, I just want to soak this up for a while! Abba’s Daughter