God is Love
Need I say, God is Love and anything that is love is in God. God is love in all kinds of ways that we take for granted. In creating this earth he provided everything that we would ever need to eat or to use in creating all kinds of unimaginable things. He created the interdependent, self-correcting system that is still working five billion years later. It’s amazing! Awesome!
He created immense varieties of species of plants and animals, a riff on possibilities only God’s mind could imagine. For instance, today there are some 350,000 species of beetle[http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evosite/evo101/VIIB1bBeetles.shtml11.21.13]. Now God either created that many varieties or he created one or several species that were so enormously adaptable to various environments that the hundreds of thousands evolved from the one. And that’s only one species of insect. Incredible! Wonderful!
He created the night and the day, our sun and the billions of stars that populate the night sky. He rolled out the seasons, another area of variety in creation. And the clouds. Have you ever tried to name or sort all the different kids of clouds—not scientifically, but artistically—and failed to identify all the different types? Stunning! Surprising!
Cosmologists who study the universe have proposed there might be other universes! Isn’t that something? There may be more than this one universe! We can’t even fathom ours, much less others. Could we ever be bored by what creation adds up to—the variety, the immensity, the unseen and the seen, the scope? And God is the creator. How in the world did he envision and then produce such a system? Awesome!
It is Love that provides the juice, the platform on which the universe(s) thrives. Love is the action of the One who sees and meets the needs of all. Love is the essence of God, but Love is shrouded in mystery and the interpretations we humans put on it. Are a beetle and a human on a par in God’s eyes? Does food and sustenance for a beetle have the same urgency as that for a human? What? Don’t we have dominion? Aren’t we in charge of the earth? What could we possibly have in common with a beetle? And yet somehow God cares for this small creature as he cares for us. This is Love!
What would happen if we humans followed our innate creation as the beetles do? Would we get along much better? Maybe even love each other? Live with purpose, meaning and fulfillment? That would certainly be humbling for us. The beetle would probably not even notice, just go on about his business as he was created to be, even as we stepped on him or over him. But we would begin to truly appreciate every other living and non-living thing in the universe.
Taking in the enormity of what God has done and continues to do for us each and every day can change our attitude towards life. If so much is given, what is the normal response to these gifts? Gratitude. When we recognize the beauty, the careful attention to our needs, when we try count the stars in heaven or the clouds in the sky, when we add up the gifts and the privilege of living on this beautiful planet, when we acknowledge the Creator, when we take in all that there is, how could we be anything but grateful?
What is your basic attitude towards God? Gratitude? Awesome? Indifference? Or something else? Would you even take in the enormity which in vain I have tried to describe? Why not? I’m talking about your home, your needs, your life. Aren’t you interested?