God IS Love

The first two pictures on the left are my front yard before I mowed it yesterday afternoon. Do you see the difference between them and the third picture farther down the page? Look closely. It's not as easy to notice in a photo, but I  notice it. Look at the clean lines of the edged sidewalk in the last picture. It's not as if the first pictures are bad in any way. The yard is still relatively neat, but I notice the difference. I feel great satisfaction after mowing grass because of the immediate gratification of the finished product. I can look at my handiwork and say to myself, the grass looks nice. If I get such a sense of fulfillment from mowing the grass to exemplify its beauty, imagine how God felt when he completed his work creating the vast heavens and earth, phase I. Imagine what he felt like the first time he created man and looked at his handiwork.  Now, imagine how he felt when he first looked at you and saw that his work was good. 

We live in a society fraught with fault finders and proponents of negativity. I here extremely "religious" people promote a God,who the Bible says IS love, as a negative fault finder who has somehow been recreated in our image. We spend an inordinate amount of time feeling guilt, inferiority, and depression in America. We read the "love" chapter, I Corinthians 13, at countless weddings, yet I'm not sure we connect those words with the creator God who abides in us. God is love. These are characteristics, according to I Corinthians 13, of God:

Love(God) is patient;love(God) is kind;love(God)is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. Love (God) does not insist on its own way; love(God) is not irritable or resentful. Love(God) does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in truth. Love(God) bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love(God) never ends. Chapter 13 begins with these beautiful words, "If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love(God), I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal."  Maybe that's why much of the media sounds so loud.                                                                                                 

God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them. 1 John 4:16b

Peace.

Love, Linda