WARNING:
The cookie is a metaphor. I am not giving out real cookies. Sorry about that.
Everybody likes free stuff, right? Buy one get one free, free meerkat when you do some car thing, free charity meal (donations encouraged) etc.
And most people like cookies. (For the sake of this post, the cookie can be zero sugar/wheat/dairy/nuts/calorie/whatever, if that's what floats your boat)
So, generally speaking, if a good friend offered you a free cookie, you'd be pretty happy with that. Cookies are nice, and they come more or less with no strings attached.
But what if this cookie was some sort of super-rich-cookie, with gold chips and platinum foil that was worth millions? What if it was a mega once-in-a-lifetime best-cookie-ever-to-exist and you couldn't buy it for yourself?
Now how does that free cookie sound?
It sounds good, yes. You want it. But could you accept that it was free?
When someone does something big for me, I feel I should try to deserve it. I'll do my best to repay my friend, or find some other way to show I am worthy of such a gift. Often, I try to do the same thing with God. I try to earn what is given to me, prove myself.
Yesterday I came home very proud of myself, having done a bunch of good stuff for good reasons. It changed how I felt about myself. But not one bit of it made a jot of difference to how God feels about me. Although he likes it when I'm good, he's not going to love me more for each good deed I do. And he's not going to love me less every time I mess up.
I can't earn that free cookie. Nothing I do could make me deserve it. And he's not asking me to. He loves me because he loves me because he loves me. End of story.
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