Love

We all know that Jesus told us to love God and others.

• The First Commandment (Love God): "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind" (Matthew 22:37).

• The Second Commandment (Love Others): "You shall love your neighbor as yourself" (Matthew 22:39).

• A New Commandment (John 13:34): "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another".

Love is heavy. True love must be unconditional — yet I wonder if anyone, including myself, can truly love another unconditionally.

Consider this: we think we love our children because they are cute and they are our offspring. We think we love our spouses because they make us feel good. And God? I thought I loved God — I truly did — but if I'm honest, I loved God because God loved me first. Now strip away all those conditions. What remains? Do I still love?

This question woke me up in the middle of the night.

I slowly realized that the only way to love unconditionally is to become love itself. God calls us His children — and so, in a spiritual sense, we are love, too. But then why don't we feel that way? Why does love so often feel distant, even from ourselves?

Perhaps the answer is this: we must empty the self and allow God's Spirit to take over. Only then do we become part of the divine — and only then do we truly become love itself.

God is Love.

Why does God desire our love so intensely when He already dwells in perfect love eternally? If God is living in love constantly, doesn’t God experience love in His/Her perfect realm? God is love, love is God. Can God experience God’s self? Since God is the source of all love, even all the loving beings sum up to meet God in his presence, God’s love is still greater than all of them. How can God feel love in his perfect realm? Think of it this way: a fish swimming in the ocean doesn’t comprehend water until it’s removed from it. We don’t notice air until we can’t breathe. Could it be that God, surrounded by constant love in heaven, created us to experience what authentic love feels like when it’s chosen freely, when it costs something precious?

True love defies our most basic survival instincts. Our bodies are programmed for self-preservation, yet genuine love demands vulnerability and sacrifice. This proves that love originates not from our physical being, but from something far beyond—from our divine essence, our souls.