Create love.
March 7, 2016
God, who is the Creator of love, is indeed with each of you. The creation of love is not well understood beyond the abstract. You know what love can mean. You experience love, you experience what it means to be loving, but you are also in the process of creating love. All beings who are aware of a God presence have some understanding of what love can be. You are all engaged in the process of creating love because you are creating yourselves in the most profound ways as your own mirror of God’s presence.
We say God creates love, that God created love, that God will create love, but what does this mean? Isn’t love something which is expressed, which is felt, which is given and received? What does it mean to create love?
Think for a moment about an assembly of light. You are sitting in the presence of candlelight, and each candle has its own light, but each candle also has the capacity of duplicating its presence as another light, and now there are two. Both are the same, and from that second candle another may be lit, and now you have candlelight that is multiplying, and yet in its essence it is no different from its source. In its very simple way this provides a view of what it means to create love, for love comes out of love. It really doesn’t have a beginning because it originates with God, and there was no time before which God did not exist. Therefore, each candle that is lit shares the same characteristics as the source candle.
It is true, a single flame from a single candle can ignite a vast area within a short time. What began as a flame can become a huge conflagration, but in the intensity of widespread flames, there is an absolute identity with the source. As you become more loving, you are taking your flame and directing it beyond yourself, but that flame is in essence no different from the flame that ignited your own candle. In the process of passing on the flame you have been given, you are creating the flames that seem to overwhelm. The love that you receive becomes clearer to you in its impact and meaning, and you then spread that flame by being loving. God created love by creating the flame that all people share.
We say you are a part of God. We often assert that. Each of you is godly. None of you alone are God, but collectively you are all a part of what God is. As you respond to life around you with a loving presence, you create that additional light, and you therefore are creating love of your own.
The love that is at the core of you is identical to the love that is God. God’s flame is not inherently different from your own. It burns as your flame burns, illuminates as your flame illuminates. Your flame of love affirms as all such flames affirm. What is in each of you is identical with one another and is identical with the force that you call God. It is that loving expression that you offer another that becomes a direct reflection of God.
You are collectively God’s hands. You are collectively God’s heart. You are collectively God’s love. As you express your lives through compassion, you are expressing in kind the compassion of God. When you reach out to comfort, it is God who reaches out in that comfort. So often human beings exhort God to act in order to bring about a given gesture, a given outcome. If you want God to do something according to your highest wishes, you enable God by responding yourself as you would perceive God to respond. It is your response which becomes a flame of love, for it is then a direct reflection of God’s flame of love.
It may be interesting to you to consider what it means to create love, but there is little purpose in merely understanding what creation means. You must, to the extent that you are capable, enact that creation if you wish reason to reign supreme in a time of observed chaos. It is of little use to sit and wring your hands and say, “I wish God would step in,” for to have God step in means you step in. Granted, you individually cannot solve the suffering of the world by your presence alone, but you can have an impact on what it is you seek through prayer, through an awareness of the need for God to be inserted into an issue you perceive as a great need.
Each of you, not just you in this group, but all who acknowledge the reality of God, becomes in fact the hands and heart of God. God works through everyone, because everyone has the capacity to reflect God’s presence. For some, that reflection may seem to be unobservable in others, but you must remember that you cannot fully occupy the thoughts of another human being. You cannot second guess. As you say, you cannot walk in their shoes, but life continues by acts of kindness, acts of compassion, acts of love. It is the exercise of that love through your interaction with life that actually gives life to God’s presence.
If you seek God’s presence, then seek that presence in your own response to what it is that may cause concern. You are the hands, the feet, the eyes, the strength, the vision of God. You create love because you are a part of God who creates love.
When you learn of others who are suffering from a disaster, the mere thought of those others raises them through the dignity of acknowledgment. There is no dignity when there is a total absence of acknowledgment. You can study the heavens, but if you don’t look up, in the end the heavens have no relevance to your lives. You can read about the suffering of others, but if you never reach out to another who may be suffering, then your awareness is empty and cold.
When you wish to stop the suffering of others, thinking of others in a positive way has a direct benefit to them. No thoughts are wasted. No images of healing are wasted. No gestures of reaching out physically, spiritually, emotionally will be wasted. Thinking of others helps them.
You do not have to be consumed by activity in order to create love. The creation of love is through the exercise of intention. It is a conscious decision to do as you perceive God would do. Being the hand of God is welcoming, for the hand of God is outstretched and the palm is up. In that position, it can only support. It can only affirm. Your energy with palms extended upwards and outwards is an energy of healing. It is an energy of strength. It is a vehicle of opportunity that brings you to act with love.
God creates love because you create love. God’s love does not exist in some kind of vacuum. Love does not exist with a fence around it to protect itself. Love is fully open. God’s love is nonjudgmental, and therefore your loving reflection can only be nonjudgmental. God’s love has no sense of time associated with it. It simply is, and it is because it has been created.
Your response to life around you must be characterized as the creation of love oriented outward. However, love is created that can be focused inward. Loving oneself is not placing oneself above anyone else. It is merely acknowledging your own dignity, and acknowledging that dignity in its truest sense means you have no other choice but to acknowledge all else with the same dignity. That is creating love, and that is being godly in that it is God who creates the love that you find yourself creating. It is that flame from God that is your flame. It may be separate in space, but it is the same flame, and as all of those flames provide light and warmth and identity, collectively those flames are the flame of God. Collectively the love that you express is the love of God.
You cannot live fully in a vacuum. There will always be some kind of exchange with another. Whether that is a physical exchange, an emotional exchange, or an exchange simply through thought, the exchange is always there, and therefore it is always possible to shape your embrace of another such that it is the purest form of love, the love of God.
Create love wherever you go. Create an environment that is accepting, that is inclusive, that is giving, that is receiving, that is full of exchange, that is governed by compassion, that is governed by listening, and that is ruled from the heart.
You are loved as you can love. You are given light as you can illuminate. You are given peace as you can become peaceful. Rejoice in the common flame that is God’s and yours!
Amen.