You Are Loved
completely … endlessly… unconditionally…
Your steadfast love, O Lord, extends to the heavens,
your
faithfulness to the clouds. —Psalm 36:5
For just a moment think of the difference in your life if you knew that at
the deepest level of your being that God is besotted with you, that God yearns
for you, yearns that you turn and be in relationship with God as the beloved of
God.
—Marcus Borg
The Character of God
When Love is in me,
—Rumi
God Hunger
Say to yourself, "I am loved by God more than I can either conceive or
understand." Let this fill all your soul and all your prayer and never
leave
you. You will soon see that this is the way to find
God.
—Abbé de Tourville
Letters of
Direction
Where is silence? Where is solitude? Where is Love?
Ultimately these cannot be
found anywhere except in the ground of our own being. There, in the silent
depths, there is no more distinction between the I and the Not-I. There is the
perfect peace, because we are grounded in infinite creative and redemptive Love.
There we encounter God, whom no eye can see, and in Whom as St. Paul says, "we
live and move and have our being." (Acts 17:28)
—Thomas Merton
"Love
and Solitude"
Thomas Merton Essential
Writings
The truth that God is love
is not obvious, but it means the creative power in the universe is love. That
means the healing power in the universe is love. That means the strongest force
in the universe is love. That means the motive of all our actions that will be
effective for healing and building a just community will be
love.
—
The
Very Rev. Ward Ewing
For the
mountains may depart and the hills be removed, but my steadfast love shall not depart
from you, and my covenant of peace shall not be removed, says the Lord, who has
compassion on you.
—Isaiah
54:10
My friend, you may be a
person today who is lonelier than you can tell anybody. You may feel so much
loss that the notion that you are a child of God is simply not possible. But the
one that John talked about—the one that John said would come among us—this one
named Jesus—cried out in his last hour, "My God! Why have you forsaken me?"
Whatever lonely place you are in today—whatever forsakenness you may feel—it
cannot be any deeper than where Jesus has already gone himself. Jesus comes to
sit beside you today on that bench to say, "You are my beloved
child."
—
Barbara K. Lundblad
Be modest now, like a thing
Ripened until it is real,
So that he who began it all
Can feel you when he reaches for you.
—Ranier Maria Rilke
Rilke’s Book of
Hours
In saying farewell to his
friends, Jesus said they would "abide" in his love. Life would separate their
courses, but they would remain in each other. Whatever began in their brief time
together would continue to join them, changed but steadfast. Jesus knew their
fears, he knew his talk of departure was disturbing.... But they had an
experience of oneness they could rely on. That’s the message of Easter to our
world. We have relationships not founded on passing hopes, but on never-failing
love.
—
George
Yandell
The daily mail can be the bearer of good news. Like when that colorful, slick envelope arrives in your mailbox with the bold print: Open Immediately! And when you open it you read the startling announcement that You Are Pre-Approved! Pre-approved by some bank in Seattle or Chicago or Philadelphia. Thus, everything is all ready for your order and you can begin using their Platinum Plus credit card. I'm always bemused and slightly bewildered at my "pre-approval." How does that happen?
Why, it is enough to carry us to the Gospel. There, in the Good News of the
Scriptures, you open the holy mail to discover that you are PRE-APPROVED by God.
Just as you are, you are God's beloved kid. Just as you are, you are accepted,
embraced, adored by the Holy One who is the holy audience for your life. It's
amazing! Yep, amazing grace!
—Douglass
Bailey
Hope does not
disappoint us,
because God's love
has been poured into our hearts
through the
Holy Spirit that has
been given to us.
So we have
known and believe the love that God has for
us. God is love, and those who
abide in love abide in God, and
God abides in them.
—1 John
4:16
The confession of John the apostle that God is love is the
fundamental meaning of the holy and adorable Trinity. Put bluntly, God is sheer
Being-in-Love and there was never a time when God was not love.The
foundation of the furious longing of God is the Father who is the originating
Lover, the Son who is the full self-expression of that Love, and the Spirit who
is the original and inexhaustible activity of that Love, drawing the created
universe into itself.
—Brennan Manning
The
Furious Longing of God
For I am
convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things
present, nor things to come, nor powers,
nor
height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate
us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
—Romans
8:38
According to John, Jesus wants to share "his generous bounty" with each of
us. He desires to give us gift after gift of love and care and insight and
challenge. What keeps us from truly experiencing that? Perhaps the key is right
before us: his bounty is an "exuberant giving and receiving" of holy love. It's
not just unidirectional. It calls us to give and serve in love, so we may in
turn receive love. Endlessly.
—Peter Wallace
Living
Loved: Knowing Jesus as the Lover of your Soul
If I call not thee in my prayers, if I keep not thee in my heart,
thy love
for me still waits for my love.
—Rabindranath
Tagore,
Gitanjali
So why does Jesus focus so narrowly on Abba as the name for God? God may be
YHWH, but that sacred name evokes mystery; YHWH may be King, but that term
evokes distance. From a long list of names, Jesus chooses Abba. What Jesus wants
to evoke with the name Abba is God's unconditional, unlimited , and unwavering
love for his people. In this name for God we are standing face-to-face with the
very premise of spiritual formation:God loves us and we are his
children.
—Scot McKnight
The
Jesus Creed
God's will in heaven is nothing other than an invitation into an embrace of
love. Joy in the form of love, healing in the form of love, faith in the form of
love. God's will in heaven is love. God's will on earth is Love. Love is God's
very nature. Scripture tells us there is no higher gift than love. God took on
human flesh for love. God restores all of creation in love.
—Renée Miller,
"Your
Will Be Done"
For the love of God is broader than the measure of the mind;
and the heart of
the Eternal is most wonderfully kind.
—Frederick William
Faber
"There is a Wideness in God's mercy"
The Hymnal
1982
Our very existence grows out of the vision that God is ultimately pure
generosity and One whose intention is to bless. The deepest truth is that there
is nothing we can do to make God love us more than God already loves us and
nothing we can do to make God stop loving us. The One who is behind all things
is nothing but love, always has been and always will be.
—John Claypool
God the Ingenious Alchemist