Exploring what it means that God IS love, not just that He loves.
In a course called First Love, it makes sense to set aside a module to understand what it means that God IS love.
So that's what we are going to do this week. But we have to recognize that love isn't all flowers and bubblegum.
When he was 16, Paul McCartney wrote the song A World Without Love. First performed by Peter and Gordon, it includes the line, "I don't care what they say I won't stay In a world without love."
Would you stay in a world without love?
Of course, McCartney's song defines love in a very narrow way - a romantic love. But what if we paused for a moment and considered a world that truly lacked love - where there was no such thing as love - at all, period. Can you imagine a world without ANY love?
C.S. Lewis writes movingly about the choice we face - to love and pay the price - or to avoid love and pay a greater price:
To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. > > But in that casket - safe, dark, motionless, airless – it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. > > The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.
We have to admit that 'love' is one of those uncomfortable topics. We can't live without it, but to trust love and to give love is incredibly risky.
I believe we need God's help to understand God's love.
O Father of Jesus,
Help me to approach thee with deepest reverence, not with presumption, not with servile fear, but with holy boldness…
My heart melts at the love of Jesus, my brother, bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh, married to me, dead for me, risen for me. He is mine and I am his, given to me as well as for me.
But my love is frost and cold, ice and snow. Let his love warm me, lighten my burden, be my heaven. May it be more revealed to me in all its influences that my love to him may be more fervent and glowing. Let the mighty tide of his everlasting love cover the rocks of my sin and care.
O Lord Jesus, come to me. O Divine Spirit, rest upon me. O Holy Father, look on me in mercy for the sake of the well-beloved.
(Selections from "The Love of Jesus", in the Valley of Vision)
How have you experienced the tension between the vulnerability of love and the temptation to protect yourself from its potential pain?
How do you need God's help to understand God's love?
Reflect on 1 John 4:8-10 this week: "Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love."
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