This is love. Not that we have loved God, but that God has first loved us.
My dear parents and godparents, you bring your child forward today, and from the very moment of this child’s conception, you have chosen to love her. The first thing that Aubrey saw when she came into this world was your face. I can only imagine that your faces were filled with joy and love, and you were probably beaming with a smile. The same thing would have happened to your family, your parents, your godparents, your family, and your friends. The first thing this child sees when anybody looks at her is probably a big beaming smile. All this child did was be born. She hasn’t done anything yet, and yet you love her.
This is an image of God’s love for us. From the first moment we were conceived, He loved us. He loved us into being and from the first time we saw anyone’s face, they were faces filled with love.
Throughout our lives, we will go through good times and bad, just as parents do in sickness and health all the days of their lives, but God loved us first.
There is a beautiful song about a man getting ready to give his daughter away on her wedding day. The name of the song is “I Loved Her First.” He begins to sing this song about him giving his daughter to a husband who will love her, and he’s saying in his heart and to this guy, “Take care of her, love her, but always remember that I loved her first.” That is an image of God’s love for us.
So much of our world revolves around striving to feel love. We want to feel the love of other people, the love of our parents, the love of our friends, and the love of somebody close to us. We yearn for that love, but God loved us first.
This is love, not that we have loved God, but that He loved us first and by that, I mean that there is nothing that we can do to gain His love because He loves us first. So much of our life is yearning and grasping and desiring to be loved. If we don’t realize that, if we don’t remember if we don’t know in our hearts that He loved us first, we will constantly be searching for love that can never last. A love that can never fulfill us as perfectly as His.
I’d like to sing this song to you. As I do, I want you to think about the notion of the father loving his daughter. I want you to think of God the Father loves you. He loves you so much that He brought you into this world and gave you to the world so that out of this love, you may share the love that you have.
I Loved You First
Look at the two of you dancin’ that way
Lost in the moment and each other’s face
So much in love, you’re alone in this place
Like there’s nobody else in the world
I was enough for her not long ago
I was her number one, she told me so
And she still means the world to me, just so you know
So be careful when you hold my girl
Time changes everything, life must go on
And I’m not gonna stand in your way
But I loved her first, I held her first
And a place in my heart will always be hers
From the first breath, she breathed
When she first smiled at me
I knew the love of a father runs deep
And I prayed that she’d find you someday
But it’s still hard to give her away
I loved her first
How could that beautiful woman with you
Be the same freckle face kid that I knew
The one that I read all those fairytales to
And tucked into bed all those nights
And I knew the first time I saw you with her
It was only a matter of time
I loved her first, I held her first
And a place in my heart will always be hers
From the first breath she breathed
When she first smiled at me
I knew the love of a father runs deep
And I prayed that she’d find you someday
But it’s still hard to give her away
I loved her first
From the first breath she breathed
When she first smiled at me
I knew the love of a father runs deep
Someday you might know what I’m goin’ through
When a miracle smiles up at you
I loved her first
So, God loves us first from the very moment that we are born. From the very first smiles that we saw, He loved us first. So much of our life is spent searching for love. Desiring for people to love us, but we have to remember that He loved us first.
We hear in the Gospel that Jesus says, remain in my love. We have to remain in that first love, that deep love, that most profound love that God loved us first. It’s not about us loving God, it’s about how much He has loved us.
Now, He places us into the world to go out into the world and to show each other that love because there are many people who don’t realize the love of God. There are many people who didn’t grow up in a loving family and loving surroundings. We have to be the ones to help them to know how much they are loved, and that God loved them first. In order to do that we must always remember that God loved us first.
