God is Love
“God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.” 1 John 4:16
It’s a common sentiment among parents: “We never knew how much love our hearts could hold until we had a child.”
Words cannot describe the tenderness in my own heart as I stumble upon the swirly-Q “I-love-Mommy” notes my 7-year-old daughter hides around our home, or the elation when my son reaches his little arms around my neck from his top bunk and says, in his yawning 5-year-old voice, “Goodnight, Mommy. I love you more than anything in the whole wide world!” My deepest joys are found in these unfathomable bonds of love. And what I’m learning from my children is that these love-bonds are nothing short of the very presence of God.
“God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him,” writes John the Apostle.
God is love.
The phrase resounds again and again in the Bible. It rolls off our lips as we comfort and encourage. It hangs on countless plaques dotting the aisles of the hybrid Christian-craft store. In a word, it’s familiar. And like many familiar truths, I hear it so often that I sometimes fail to hear it at all. I read, “God is love,” yet my comprehension dilutes to this: “God loves.”
But that’s not what it says.
Without the “is,” the phrase remains true, and yet its true meaning is lost.
When it comes to God, love is much more than a verb. Love is the very identity and essence of who God is.
God is love.
Sure, we say. Okay, true enough. Hang it on the wall.
But what if this verse, domesticated by its ubiquitous presence and repetition, contains within a much more radical proposition:
To experience love is to experience the very presence of God among us.
Because our children are natural conduits of love, they help us see the world with a wholly new perspective. A holy perspective. Those once ordinary moments—the little hand coiled around Dad’s finger, the unexpected hug to comfort Brother’s tears, the belly giggle after yet another round of peek-a-boo—are sacred, all.
“The kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these,” Jesus says, embracing the children as they embrace Emmanuel—God with Us—the incarnation of love himself.
This Valentine’s Day, as we’re stricken with Cupid’s dainty red arrows, let’s look into our children’s beaming eyes, peer into their humble souls, and in the transcendent and mysterious love we share, recognize the holy presence of God.
Wendy Connelly is the faith columnist for Kansas City Parent Magazine and a host of the Alpha Course at her church in Olathe.