To resist love, wherever you find it, is to resist God.

We find fragments of love everywhere in every corner of the world…even in the dark places and spaces and depending upon the package we can often find ourselves pushing it away, pretending its not there or defining it as something other than what it is.

Of course our efforts are futile in that love is not one to suffer being redefined.

Of course it begs the question – what is love to which the only response can be God. This is rarely satisfying to us because we would like to define it as a set of certain actions between certain types of people. This is because we are not satisfied with what we cannot define. If we cannot define it we cannot control it and if we cannot control it we are scared of it and would prefer to destroy it.

So love is God and God is love but this does not mean that the actions we would like to define love by are not affiliated in any way. These loving acts, feelings and responses owe their existence to this God, this well-spring, this source.

One is tempted to ask if love can exist without God. If God is love does this not mean that all love comes from God? I am human but this does not mean all humans come from me. But love is not a thing…not in the same sense that I am human. Love is an idea. Love is an idea that is worked out in the lives of those who comprehend it. Love acts upon.

God is love.

God is not merely lov-ing. God is not merely a lov-er. God is love.

Think about that for a moment and digest it. If God is love and love is an idea that acts than God is the very measure of love. One does not look at God and say God is not loving because (FILL IN THE BLANK) in the same way one does not look at a 12 inch ruler and say it is not a foot long because my feet are 11 inches.

I see much resistance to love in the world. I hear a lot of resistance that sounds a lot like someone complaining about the 12 inch ruler. A lot of defining love by our own standards rather than in comparison to and because of the very measure of love.

One says “that is not love because I am not fond of the package it is in” or “this is not love because it does not “feel” like love” or the worst of them all “my God would not call that love…”

Sentences that start with “my God” sound suspiciously like idol worship to me. My God. My God would not; my God could not; my God is; my God isn’t…

There is an old awareness among theologians that whenever we become too certain of who God is and what God looks like and acts like we notice that this God begins to look a lot like the one who is doing the describing. Hitler  did this. He defined the god of the Reich and this god had a whole lot in common with Hitler. People who define God typically do so for their own ends and those ends are never good. Any god we can create and define becomes a destroyer.

God is a lot of things but above all God is mysterious and God’s ways are not ours. God’s love is not ours although it seeks to save us because that is its nature.

All that to say when you see something that looks and sounds suspiciously like love (God) take a few minutes before you deny it and ask yourself what this love (God) could be up to lurking about in this place you do not expect. Ask yourself why it makes you uncomfortable and whether this might have more to do with you then with it.