{"id":5701,"date":"2026-09-01T09:07:51","date_gmt":"2026-09-01T13:07:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/?p=5701"},"modified":"2026-09-01T09:07:51","modified_gmt":"2026-09-01T13:07:51","slug":"god-goes-first","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2026\/09\/01\/god-goes-first\/","title":{"rendered":"God Goes First"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0click here<\/a>
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Each day this month of August we\u2019ll be looking at one of the extraordinary metaphors that the Bible uses to illustrate the nature of our relationship with God.<\/em>


In the 1997 feature film\u00a0As Good As It Gets<\/em>, Helen Hunt plays Carol, a single mom\u00a0with a chronically sick child\u00a0who stays afloat by working as a Manhattan waitress.

All she wants is someone who will love her.\u00a0Someone normal.<\/em>

“Why can’t I have a normal boyfriend?” she complains to her mother.\u00a0“Just a regular boyfriend, one that doesn’t go nuts on me!”

Her mother answers calmly, “Everybody wants that, dear. It doesn’t exist. There\u2019s no such thing as normal.”\u00a0As if to prove her mother right, Carol gradually finds herself drawn to an embittered writer named Melvin, played by Jack Nicholson.

Melvin is a\u00a0mess.\u00a0Even though he desperately yearns for love, he doesn’t enjoy the company of other people.\u00a0Afflicted by\u00a0obsessive-compulsive tendencies, he is afraid to step on sidewalk cracks.\u00a0

Melvin has almost given up on the hope that his life will ever get better.\u00a0He sighs\u00a0to a support group of depressed psychiatric patients, “What if this is as good as it gets?”\u00a0

No one can stand to serve Melvin at the Manhattan restaurant where he always eats \u2013 always at the same table and always with disposable plastic utensils so he won’t risk contamination from previous patrons.\u00a0

No one except Carol, who begins to see someone worth loving behind his off-putting exterior.

But it’s not easy.\u00a0In conversation, Melvin doesn’t have much of a filter.\u00a0Carol, exasperated, asks him, “Do you have any control over how creepy you allow yourself to get?”

In the film’s signature scene they sit down together at an upscale restaurant.\u00a0 Melvin immediately observes how interesting it is that he was required to wear a jacket and tie, while Carol could be served (as he points to her) “in a house dress.”

That’s it.\u00a0Carol has had enough.\u00a0She stands up to leave.\u00a0

As it dawns on him that he has\u00a0just insulted her,\u00a0he begs her to stay.\u00a0“Pay me a compliment, Melvin,” she replies.\u00a0“I need one.”\u00a0She then explains, as if to someone who flunked Empathy 101, “A compliment is something nice about someone else.”\u00a0\u00a0

Melvin pulls himself together. “I’ve got a really great compliment for you, and it’s true.”\u00a0

Carol sits down.\u00a0“I’m so afraid you’re about to say something awful,” she admits.\u00a0\u00a0

Melvin\u00a0launches into some of his personal medical history, and how much he hates pills.\u00a0“I’m using the word ‘hate’ here…\u00a0Hate<\/em>.”\u00a0This is not going well at all.\u00a0He meanders.\u00a0He seems to lose his way.\u00a0Then he announces that after a conversation with Carol a few weeks earlier, he finally started taking the hated pills the next morning.

Carol is confused.\u00a0“I don’t quite get how that’s a compliment for me.”

Melvin waits a moment and then clarifies, “You make me want to be a better man.”<\/em>

After a long pause, Carol says, “That’s maybe the best compliment of my life.”\u00a0\u00a0

It’s amazing to watch Helen Hunt’s face as she processes Melvin’s compliment. There’s a reason why she won Best Actress from\u00a0both the Golden Globes and Academy Awards\u00a0for this role, and why both groups honored Jack Nicholson as Best Actor as well.\u00a0\u00a0

These two performers\u00a0are pulling back the curtain on our greatest hopes and greatest fears.\u00a0\u00a0

What does it mean to love?\u00a0Will anyone ever love me, really love me, when they find out who I really am?\u00a0If all of us are living\u00a0messed-up lives, how can we\u00a0ever draw close enough to each other to survive\u00a0without hurting each other in the process?\u00a0

Love is what makes us want to be better people \u2013 even to do what we would rather not do \u2013 so that we might experience greater joy and intimacy with those we love.

And now the scariest question: Who\u00a0goes first?

John the apostle replies, “And this is the kind of love we’re talking about: not that once upon a time we loved God, but that he loved us…” (I John 4:10, The Message<\/em>).

God goes first.\u00a0God is one the one who declares that he really loves us, even though he knows who we really are.\u00a0And he pours his love into our hearts so we can bravely choose to love him and love each other, even at great risk.\u00a0

And the miracle of such love?

It makes us want to be better human beings.<\/em>

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0click here Each day this month of August we\u2019ll be looking at one of the extraordinary metaphors that the Bible uses to illustrate the nature of our relationship with God. In the 1997 feature film\u00a0As Good As It Gets, Helen Hunt plays Carol, a single mom\u00a0with a chronically sick child\u00a0who stays afloat by… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5702,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1179,104],"class_list":["post-5701","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-gods-initiative","tag-love"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5701","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5701"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5701\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5703,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5701\/revisions\/5703"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5702"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}