Mar 16, 2014

God is Love, Part 1

God is Love. Jesus describes God in a parable called the Prodigal Son. In that story, the younger son took his inheritance and squandered it on wine, women, and song, and when his money ran out, was forced to feed slop to the pigs just to have something to eat. He decided to return home because the food he was fed was less tasteful than the slop for the pigs, and he was always hungry, not because he was truly sorry for his ways. But the Father kept watch every day for his wayward son, and when his son came home because he was hungry, the father greeted him joyfully. Note that the son returning home was not sorry for anything he did, only hungry and desired a spot where he could have a full stomach. Not a very edifying reason to come home.

There is a saying: “Love means never having to say your are sorry.” from the movie “Love Story”. That is one of Gods gifts to humanity, a short pithy saying that defines what all encompassing Love means, from the viewpoint of the one who loves.r As always, God keeps trying to tell us more about Itself and the Nature of God, the Eternal Wisdom. In the parable of the Prodigal Son, the son mumbled something carefully rehearsed when he met his father, not meaning it, just to place himself near a source of well being for his comfort, not meaning he was sorry for his deeds. But as God spoke through that movie on the big screen, that is part of the Creative Power of Love, always understanding and responding to the pain that each of us carries from the action of our Shadow side.

Those of us who have been blessed by children know truly the meaning of that gift from God: “Love means never having to say you are sorry.” It does not matter what your child has done, love is still there. I know parents whose children have done terrible things in the eyes of the world, but still the love is there, they always love their child. They may weep for their child, but the love is vibrant and strong. Thus God is, as the father in the parable is, loving His child, that is, us, you and me, despite what we may have done.

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p style=”text-align: center;”>The Breath of God

The Book of Genesis states that we are made in the 'Image and Likeness of

God,' Genesis 1:27, and that 'God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life', Genesis 2:7. If we are in the image and likeness of God, and God breathed It's very life into us, and God is Love and only Love, what does that make us? It means only one thing: we are Love, personified, or as has been said, Love individualized, if we know it or not. That answers the question what Jesus meant when he said that the kingdom of Heaven lies within each of us, in our midst. Within us lies the very Breath of God, and that breath can be called Love, for that is the nature of God. To experience the very nature of God means to open our eyes from our illusions we have of our nature, and see you, me, and all seven billion of us, as Love, the very Breath of God. Now just as our breath does not define us, the Breath of God does not define all God is, but like our breath that contains a trace of our DNA, the Breath of God contains a trace of God's DNA, but since God is Infinity Itself, we have some portion of God's infinity defining each of us, and some portion of infinity is still infinity. (Ask any mathematician.)

Now that translates: We are and have Infinite Love within us, and that Love defines our very being, which we can call Life.

We can also call that Breath of God our Soul. God has told us repeatedly that the love we share is eternal, that the love that unites us also unites us with God, that this eternal love is what makes us human. It also makes us divine, and this is what will live forever in the Being we call Life, or Breath, or God.

I would highly recommend spending some time for a few days, weeks or years pondering this incredible fact: we are the very Breath of God. The life we live is not defined by the body and all the physical facts around us, but by the internal Life that is ours. The body itself is a mechanical object, wonderfully made to give us the experience of this plane of existence, but it is not an end to itself. Most of our religions teach us that we are both body and soul, but in truth we are body, mind, and soul, where mind is the consciousness of our being, where we exist, we who are experiencing this life.

We are not our body. Our body houses our consciousness that defines who we are. Our consciousness is that part of us that experiences all that we are, telling us who we are, that spark of genius that clarifies the world into meaning. The Breath of God is our soul, and our mind is the bridge between the soul and the body, that part of our triune being that forms our perception of the universe around us. That is, the mind contains both the physical and the metaphysical, able to grasp both the physical sensations of our five senses, and the metaphysical insights that come to us from the Breath of God, our soul, that allow creative thinking, beauty, sorrow, all the non-physical sensations and emotions that fill our being, and make us who we are, forming our consciousness. Our being is a triune being: body, mind, and soul, and this triune being is our eternal being living in the Breath of God.

God is Love, and we are Love individualized, housing the very Breath of God.

I have other musings on God at my journal on Beliefnet.com, under Dave434.