I Love You This Much

By Jimmy Wayne

No matter what, I love you this much.

Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day, so of course today we are talking about love! Finding the perfect song was no easy task, as there are millions of love songs out there to choose from. I wanted to find one about how deep God’s love is for us. Now, I could’ve picked a classic hymn like “How Deep the Father’s Love for Us,” or “O the Deep, Deep Love of Jesus.” But then, in my search for the perfect song, I was reminded of this real tearjerker I heard years ago. And no, it’s not “Walking Her Home” by Mark Schultz (*tears* gets me every time!).

Have you ever read the story, “Guess how much I love you”? This children’s book is about two hares—Little Nutbrown Hare and Big Nutbrown Hare (or Little Hare and Big Hare, as we’ll call them). In this story, Little Hare stretches out his arms as wide as they can go and tells Big Hare that he loves him, “This much.” Big Hare then stretches out his arms and says, “But I love you this much.” And of course, since Big Hare’s arms are longer, Little Hare can see that the other hare loves him even more.

Throughout the story, Little Hare keeps trying to one-up Big Hare’s depth of love for him. At the end of the book, Little Hare says to Big Hare, “I love you to the moon.” He falls asleep satisfied, thinking that he has won. After all, what could be bigger than the sky? But then, Big Hare concludes by saying, “I love you to the moon…and back.”

Isn’t that comparable to God’s love for us? We can try, but there is no way that our love could be as deep, as high, and as wide as his love for us.

“Guess how much I love you” reminded me of the song, “I Love You This Much,” by Jimmy Wayne. The song is about a little boy who longs to be loved and wanted by his father, who happens to never be around. One day, the boy looked up at his dad, stretched his arms out as far as they could go, and said,

I love you this much, and I’m waiting on you to make up your mind. Do you love me, too? However long it takes, I’m never giving up. No matter what, I love you this much.

The son grew up to hate his father, but he still longed to be loved. When the father passes away, the son, filled with hate, looks up above the preacher at the funeral and sees a crucifix. On that crucifix hangs Jesus Christ, with his arms stretched out as far as they’d go as if to say,

I love you this much, and I’m waiting on you to make up your mind. Do you love me too? However long it takes, I’m never giving up. No matter what, I love you this much.

“I love you this much.”

Picture that. Whenever you look at a cross, imagine Jesus hanging there with his arms stretched out saying, “I love you this much.”

He loves us that much, that he died for us. Think about that for a minute.

God’s love is the greatest love of all time. We can never find a more true, pure, and unconditional love than that found in God and his Son, Jesus Christ. Jesus once said, “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13). When he died on the cross, that was him laying down his life for us and the greatest display of love the world has ever seen.

This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. (1 John 4:10).

This Valentine’s Day remember that true love comes not from humans but from God, so we must show our loved ones the same kind of love that God has for us. God’s love is pure and unconditional. It is a love that goes deeper than Challenger Deep and higher than Mount Everest. And the most amazing thing is that nothing can separate us from his love (Romans 8:38-39).

And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, 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 3:17-19

Click here to watch the music video for “I Love You This Much.”