H,
I think it is the basis of
everything else. This love has to be shown to us in a very real way or we just
will not get it. One of the great stories in Rick Joyner’s “Final Quest” is the
one about the homeless man who is feted in heaven because he did not act in
violence towards a cat at a difficult time. For someone who was not a recipient
of much love his whole life to refrain from lashing out was a huge sign for
heaven of a heart in change. It epitomises, for me, the axiom “to whom much is
given, much is expected.” And vice versa.
We will only be as well
formed as the love we receive. It is really that simple. In the end, the human
heart is built to respond fully to nothing else but love. In this receiving,
there is no ambiguity about the meaning of love. You know it when you get it. You
know what it is not when it is absent.
If we are all to receive the
full measure of God’s love we will all have to make that crucial choice: to
reject it or to receive it. The gospels are a crucial love letter. They can be
brutal and they are always realistic. They do not pretend that this is tender
to tender. They do not have that fake bottom of most love songs that show the
hollowness of the feelings held and the fluidity of who they are held for. They
tell the tale of love at its most extreme: reaching down to explain everything
and give a way out of the predicaments of the fractured human soul.
God offers His divine
friendship to all of us. It does not come to us all the same way or at the same
time. It is more specific because the human experience is specific and not
general. It comes with the things we are not good at. It is shrouded in the
mystery of our constant failure. It reaches the lowly because life has broken
them first and they know the world for what it truly is; a poor imitation of an
original plan that is bigger and brighter than any dreams we may have or hold.
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