Blog # 65 GOD'S LOVE

Blog # 65 GOD'S LOVE How sad it would be if we did not experience God's love for us every day! Or if it were ours only on Sunday. Or not at all. Yet that seems to be the experience of many good people. Just as the eye, which is made for seeing needs light in order to see, so the human heart, which is made to discover and to love God and be loved by God, needs faith for this to occur. Faith is a gift rather than an accomplishment. We 'receive' it rather than 'do' it. An object is visible whether we see it or not. Light and objects to be seen are all around us, and yet we have to open our eyes in order to see. In a similar mysterious way God's presence and love are real in all of creation, but we must open our minds and hearts to experience it that way. Then faith can come and make the difference only faith can make. It seems to me that if we did not believe in God and experience God's presence and love in all creation we would be missing one of the essential differences between ourselves as human creatures and the lower animals and other forms of creation around us. Though an apple tree does not nor can not know this, its leaves are green. So God's love is real even for someone who does not believe in it. A great difference, however, lies in the fact an apple tree was not made to see whereas the human heart was made to love God, and until we do we are incomplete. And in this limitation we might as well have been a lower animal, seeing colors and shapes but not their meaning as signs of God's love. With eyes closed we might as well be blind. God loves us enough to give us beautiful sunsets,the wonders involved in a growing plant, the mystery of the wind, a cool evening on a hot summer's day, the amazing tools that help a bee make honey and wax from flowers, and the beauty of the stars at night. But He gives these you might say to all the world, to the lower animals as well as to us. To us, His human creatures, God g ives more of His love, and therefore more of the gifts of His love. Certainly a well fed cow is happy as cows can be happy as she lies in a field in the evening of a long summer's day, chewing her cud and watching the sun go down. There is God before her, creating it all. Even her. All the colors are there, the blue and the reds, the orange, the clouds slowly slipping off to the east, the breeze brushing against the corn. Betsy,the cow, is lying in the grass, watching it all. Certainly the cow in such a picture is content. But she cannot enjoy the beauty of the sun going down in the same way or as much as we who are human creatures, though we see the same colors and feel the same breeze. The beautiful things God has placed in the world are for all, His chickens,horses, trees, His men and His women. But the amount and kind of happiness and enjoyment each of God' creatures receives from His beautiful world is different. God made men and women in His own image, for a more perfect and complete share in His own goodness and beauty. ( Rom 1: 19,20; Wisdom 13: 4,5). We not only see what is around us, not only know its size shape sound and color, but also its meaning, why it is around us. How sad it would be if our home were in New Jersey and we were heading south from Savannah on our way home! It is far more sad than that if our daily experience is without God's love. So, God Who loves us all sent Jesus to command us to tell the Good News of His love that we have received to all the world! Thanks and praise to Him!