“See what love the Father has bestowed on us that we may be called the children of God. Yet so we are” (I John 3:1).
Sometimes, or too many times, this truth that John is sharing with his community and with us this morning is hard to receive but these words are true. God bestows on us his love as we are right now in the moment. He is not waiting for us to do anything right, to be perfect, and/or to say the perfect prayer. Our Father just wants to love us as we are right now as we are in this moment. He loves us more than we can mess up, he loves us when we sin and even in the act of our committing sin, and he loves us more than we can imagine.
God also loves us uniquely in the way we are in most need. The key is that he loves us on his terms not ours. He knows what we need, the deepest desires of our hearts and souls. He loves us unconditionally and infinitely.
The challenge is, that our concept of what love is, has been distorted by influences of the enemy and the fallen world around us. So as the country singer, Johnny Lee, sang in 1980, we are, “Lookin’ for love in all the wrong places.” We are looking because God made us to be loved and to love in return, that is our deepest yearning and hunger: to be loved, to belong, to be seen, to be heard, and to be understood.
Time and again though, we fall because we grasp like Adam and Eve did. We want to determine love on our terms, on our conditions, believing that if we can be in control, we can be safe and won’t be hurt. The problem is that authentic love is to be received and it is just not about feelings, emotions, sentiments, comfort, or security. All of those come from the reality of love, but the foundation must be grounded in the unconditional love of God.
Authentic love is about being vulnerable to another. It is not about grasping but about receiving. It is not a presenting of ourselves in a false way that we believe another wants us to be but a willingness to be ourselves and risk that we will be rejected or accepted as we are, with our imperfections as well as our positive attributes. Love is also about sacrifice, our willingness to give ourselves to another, to be there for them. As St. Thomas Aquinas taught, “Love is to will the good of the other as other.”
Even if we have a correct understanding of love, we are still finite and have a limited point of view. Unconditional love is a love that we cannot learn on our own. We must experience God’s love to transcend our finite understanding of love. May we make time consistently to be still and allow God to bestow his infinite love upon us. Then we will remember who we are, his beloved children. And as we remember, may we see each other as God sees us, with his infinite love.
Photo: Sanctuary at St Gabriel Catholic Church, Windsor, CT
Spiritual Stepping Stones 