Blog # 224 God's Love

Blog # 224 God's Love How sad it would be if we did not experience God's love for us every day, but just on Sunday, or not at all. Just as the eye, which is designed to see needs light in order to see, so the human heart, which is designed to discover and to love God in all creation needs faith in order for this to occur. There is mystery in the experience of faith. An object is visible whether we see it or not. Faith is a gift rather than an accomplishment. Jesus told us it could be ours if we seek it. Light and objects to be seen are all around us, and yet we have to open our eyes in order to see them. In a similar mysterious way God's presence and love are real in all creation, but we must open our mind and hearts to receive the gift of faith and to see it that way. It seems to me if we did not believe in God and experience God's presence and love in all creation we would be missing in our experience one of the essential differences between ourselves as human creatures and the lower forms of animals around us. An apple is red and its leaves are green even though the apple tree does not and cannot know this. So God's love is real even for someone who does not believe in it. The difference lies in the fact an apple tree was not designed to see whereas the human heart was designed to know and love God, and until we do we are incomplete and might as well have been a lower animal. With eyes closed we might as well be blind. God loves us all enough to give us beautiful sunsets, the wonders involved in a growing plant, the mystery of the wind, the amazing tools that enable a bee to make honey and wax from flowers, and the beauty of the stars at night. But God gives these gifts, you might say, to all the world, to the lower animals as well as to us. But to us, his human creatures, God gives more of God's love and therefore more of the gifts of God's love. Certainly a healthy 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 clouds slowly slipping off to the east, the breeze brushing against the corn, Betsy 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 humans do . The beautiful things God has placed in the world are for all, His chickens, horses, trees, men and women. But the amount and kind of happiness and enjoyment each of God's creatures gets from His beautiful world is different. God makes men and women in His own image, capable of experiencing and enjoying a more perfect and complete share in His own goodness and beauty as God our Creator. How sad it would be if our home were in New Jersey and we were heading south from Augusta, Georgia thinking we were going 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 tell us our sins can be forgiven, we can turn around in our journey, wherever we might be, discover the truth about God and His love , and then command us to share the Good News of the Gospel with all the world, beginning with ourselves. Thanks and praise to Him !