The Love That Won't Give Up
He was buried in his grave in the garden of Uzza. And Josiah his son succeeded him as king.
2 Kings 21:26 (NIV)
Chapter 21 of 2 Kings tells one of the darkest stories in the Bible: Manasseh took the throne as a boy and spent fifty-five years doing evil in the eyes of the Lord — rebuilding the idolatrous altars his father had demolished, raising altars to Baal, and dragging an entire nation away from God. Read like that, it sounds like the end of the line: how do you love a people that insists on getting lost?
But the story did not end with Manasseh. God did not cancel the covenant because of human unfaithfulness: after him came Josiah, who would lead one of Israel's greatest spiritual reforms. God's love passes through bad generations without being tainted by them — he disciplines, he waits, and he starts over where there seemed to be no way back.
That is the truest portrait of the love John describes: whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love — a love that won't give up. Perhaps you look at your family, your past, or someone far away and think it is past the point of return. It is not. The same God who kept a lineage of hope after Manasseh is still writing sequels. While he loves, there is always a next chapter.