How Do I Love Thee?
I have been thinking a lot lately about God as Father. As always, I have been led to many sources – Biblical scripture, other spiritual and esoteric sources, the thoughts of others – and have been spending time prayerfully meditating on all of this material to figure out exactly what I want to share from my own heart about this most endearing title we place upon our Creator. Hopefully I can make sense of all the thoughts rattling around in my head as I write them here.
I hope you never have to come to a place where you truly understand through personal experience the breadth and depth of just how much God loves you.
How do you love a child that rejects you – just about everything about you? How do you love a child who audibly voices blame on you for everything wrong in their life? How do you love a child for whom you have made sacrifice after sacrifice? How do you love a child that disregards your own views and beliefs and lives a life that is 180 degrees from all that you have tried in vain to teach them? Have you ever loved such a child in your life?
How do you love such a child? You simply Love them. That is all. You don’t stop. You don’t qualify their love for you. You don’t place conditions for your love on them. You just simply continue to Love them.
This – and so much more – is how God Loves you, us, His entire creation. For God IS Love. Love, in it’s truest form and expression, IS God. God is expressed in the most endearing term possible – He is our Father. Not a father who is fallible. Not a father who is sometimes weak. Not a father that makes mistakes, in spite of all he does that is good and from his very heart. No. God is a Father against which no one can point a finger of blame.
I have experienced a very small portion of God’s heart-felt sadness for His children. In the second paragraph above, for me, the answer to the last question is – Yes, I have. However, the answer to the question beginning the third paragraph is a bit beyond me. I only know that I Love God first and foremost in my life. I only know that, despite all of my personal troubles and tribulations as well as the evil so prevalent in our world today, I treasure life. I treasure my life and I thank God throughout each and every day for it. I have experienced, and continue to experience the catalyst of Love – ‘God Love’ – that binds my wife and I together into a pair of individuals that have become – through that catalyst – one personality. It is only due to this experience within that I am able in the most minute way explain the answer to that second question. How do we love those who reject us? We just simply Love them. Not with the Love of God from beyond the material. But rather with the Love of God that resides within each heart that seeks after Him first and foremost, those who truly love Him.
The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.” (Romans 8:15)