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Love is often held up as an ideal emotional state. But love is not only an emotion - it is something we learn, something that we must work towards, and work on. Love is an act of the will, of heart, mind, body, and soul - an act of integration, of wholeness. To be loving is to be whole. To love is to align ourselves in the direction of love, to act with love, to think with love, to be creatively loving and lovingly creative.

This begins with knowing ourselves loved. Completely.  Loved for who and what we are, not for who and what we want to be, or should be, or could be, or who are what we can be moulded to be. Loved with the fierce tenderness of God, loving creator, loving redeemer, loving spirit. 

In the love of God we are loved beyond measure, loved beyond reason. We are a beloved child of God, and of infinite value. "For God so loved the world, that God sent God's only son." says the sixteenth verse of the third chapter of John's Gospel. God did not love only parts of the world, or only certain types of people, or those of certain backgrounds, races, sexuality, gender identity, or those who behave a certain way, or those who believe a certain way.  God loved, and loves, the world. 

And this love is the root of all we are and all we can be.  First John 4 verse 19: "We love, because God first loved us."

You are loved. Be loved. Be loving.

 

Isaiah 49.15,16a

15 Can a woman forget her nursing-child,
    or show no compassion for the child of her womb?
Even these may forget,
    yet I will not forget you.
16 See, I have inscribed you on the palms of my hands