"I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge --that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God." -Ephesians 3:16-21
For years, before I was blessed in motherhood, I used these verses as the basis for my main hope and prayers over special young people that God allowed me to meet. That list that I lift up grows longer and longer and I have now added my biological children's names along with the children of some of those young people.
The words above have such power and depth and the ones in bold print are printed at the beginning of this precious children's book. It is a "song of God's love" and our copy even has a music CD included. It illustrates just how much a mother bear loves her baby bear, "best...most...high...low...deep...wide."
My mom and I used to jokingly argue about who loved whom the most. Since I have become a mother myself, I have started to concede to her (just here, of course, not face to face;). The reason: I am convinced my kids have not one clue of how much I love and adore them, so maybe I have never really understood the extent of my mother's love. No matter how much I tell them, or hug them, or be silly with them, or correct them, I don't think they will glimpse it until they are parents themselves.
I feel this way about our former students as well. Unless they experience loving others the way we experienced God loving them in our hearts, they will never know how much we care. And they nor we could create that. They just have to surrender their inner beings to Him and "out of his glorious riches" He can strengthen their "power to grasp."
One of my favorite phrases is "this love that surpasses knowledge". I know my precious Dax is going to wrestle with this. He really values knowledge right now and I am afraid that he may value it for a long while (like some of his DNA contributors). It is hard when knowledge gets knocked off its "high horse" but I am praying for all of them (not Dax alone) to accept their "dirt for brains" and be loved "in their inner beings" and for "Christ to dwell in their hearts through faith".
