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God is Love 9


And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him. (I John 4:16)

 

          Today’s characteristic is one with which I have difficulty. It’s not that I doubt that God can know all. He’s omniscient. But to address the idea that love knows all. That requires an intellect or personality. We tend to think of love perhaps as something we fall into and over which we have no control, but at the same time we think of ourselves as the source of the love. It does not act. We act. It cannot know. We know. Therefore, love can’t be omniscient. I mean, isn’t love blind?
         One of the things writers are supposed to ask is “What if?” What we do not love so much as love works through us? What if love is what gives us ideas about loving? What if love is a conscious being, and not just biochemical responses? The first thing that love as a living, conscious being would mean is nothing. Our experience of it would be what our experience of it has always been. Nothing would have to change because we are designed in such a way that love can work with us and through us. We’re not talking Invasion of the Body Snatchers or The Exorcist here. We’re talking about something that feels natural because it is.
          The second thing that love as living, conscious being would mean is everything. We could learn from it. We might be able to learn to communicate with it. We might be able to come to recognize it and cooperate with it. At the very least, we might stop assuming that we are such great success stories when it comes to love, and we might stop bludgeoning ourselves when we fail to live up to our expectations. We are learning to love, from Love. We need to listen to it.

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