Updated December 29, 2009
 www.lovecounts.net

I have been giving a great deal of thought to the gift of love and the understanding I have been given. Like a flower unfurling its petals one by one to the warmth of sky and sun, love blossomed into something unique and utterly beautiful. Part of the understanding is the recognition that it is indeed a gift. Another part of the understanding is the ‘why’ of it. God wanted me to experience for myself just a tiny fraction of how He loves us and how He wants us to love all of mankind.

It is the quality of this love which draws my attention to the need to understand. It is a love so incredible and outside my own experience that it is seemingly beyond words to explain. It is something each person would have to experience for themselves in order to really know. But it is important that I try to put words to wordless emotion. It is much like the Sh.h.h.h a friend and I share which is a tapestry of finely interwoven threads making a lovely and wonderful statement without any need for words.

I have written that there are no negatives attached to this love. However, that only describes one aspect. So I set out in my mind to understand what else makes God’s love for us so different than what we normally experience as humans between humans.

Freedom, giving, lack of attachment are the words that come to mind. These words, however, are but poor relatives to the reality. The freedom comes from the lack of attachment. Because there is no attachment the love is the driving force behind the desire to give and give and give without requiring or wanting anything in return.

Love IS freedom from doubt or fear. Love cannot be hurt or disappointed. Love sees beyond the outward action to the inner source of perfection. Love IS compassion, mercy, understanding, and joy. Love works always for the benefit of others, not oneself. Love IS a stand-alone energy force requiring no fuel, no renewal. God is Love. LOVE IS THE ESSENCE OF THE UNIVERSE.

So, if the above is God’s love for us, how does that differ from our love for each other?

Except for those poor souls who have been deprived of love since birth, most of us have demonstrated one or more aspects of God-like love at some time in our lives. The main difference between human love and God-Love is attachment. With attachment comes vulnerability. Think about it. The intensity or degree of love we hold for another human being is in direct proportion to how much we can be hurt by their action or removal from our life.

Because of our ego-limited capacity to love, it is almost impossible for human beings to understand that by giving us the freedom to choose God set Himself free to give only perfect Love to every soul who has ever come or will ever come to this world. He can control the universe and yet He chose to relinquish control over us and allow each individual to make his/her own way through the process of being human. But because part of being human is to know loneliness, pain, doubt, confusion and need, we find it almost impossible to believe such a Love can exist at all, let alone on an individual basis. When all is said and done, God asks only that we learn the one lesson, and that is how to love as He loves.