Note: On Tuesdays, you can find me at Your Daily Tripod, owned by my friend TonyD. A longer version of the post below appears there.
How much does God love us? We get the lyrical answer in today’s first lectionary reading:
In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. (1 John 4:10, NRSVCE)
That’s right. So much that He sent His son to pay for our sins, not because we’d been so faithful or well behaved, or even because we loved Him. Nope. He did it because He loved us that much.
Let that roll around in your soul for a little bit. File it away for the next time someone is working your last nerve, so you remember that God loves that person that much too.
How much does Jesus love us? We get the practical example in today’s Gospel reading. All he wanted was for the crowd to disperse after a 
long day so he and the apostles could rest. But he knew that mass of humanity was hungry, and the disciples were proving less than creative on how to deal with that. So Jesus fed them. Overfed them, when you get right down to it.
Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to his disciples to set before the people; and he divided the two fish among them all. And all ate and were filled… (Mark 6:41-42, NRSVCE)
But that’s how love works, right? With human love, one person almost always loves a little be more than he or she is loved; relationship dynamics shift. With God, it’s a constant: He will always love us. He will always love us more than we love Him. We cannot outlove God, to paraphrase a friend. But I suspect He finds delight when we try.
