In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us… (I John 4:10 ESV)
God’s Love
I know a young lady who recently started wearing eyeglasses. When I asked if they were working, she lowered them, and said, “I can not see the dots on the wallpaper.” Then she properly replaced her glasses, and said, “now I can see them.”
At times I have thought that I need better glasses to clearly see God’s love. I see heartache, and suffering, and disorder, and pain, and chaos. And it is not that I doubt God’s love… I just wish I could see it. So I have thought that more scripture, more pious thoughts, and more purposeful interpretation would help me know that God is love with absolute certainty.
But I have had it backwards. I now wonder if my problem is the poor glasses that I DO already have. I look at the world through my vision changing assumptions of selfishness, time-emphasis, shortsightedness, impatience, and MY definitions of what God should do.
When I get rid of those glasses, even for a little while, I see that God is serious when He declares not only that He does loving things. But God IS love.
God gives us the gift of being able to love after first declaring that He is able to give that gift, because He is love.
God Himself is the gift of love.