Valentine’s Day

“What’s love got to do, got to do with it? What’s love but a second hand emotion?  - - Tina Turner                       

          Love has everything to do with it. According to another song, this one from the Broadway musical “Carousel,” ...”Love makes the world go round.” By the number of ads this month about love, one would think they were synonymous with chocolate and roses.  So, what is the true nature of love?

          First, we have to love ourselves. I have given this advice before. Each morning look at yourself in the mirror and love the person you see there.  There is a lovely poem by Maya Angelo, and all you need to know is the title, Phenomenal Woman.” Believe that there is a phenomenal person staring back at you in the mirror.  Tell that person you love him/her. Say it each morning until you mean it!

          Why is it so important to love ourselves? Because no one else will love us until we love ourselves. Because if we do not accept this truth about this, we are denying God in our lives. Because there is a spark of the divine within each of us. It is called our soul. That spark is wonderful and glorious and should be deeply appreciated. When God created us, “in his likeness,” it was meant in the spirit or soul not in the physical. We are divine beings living in a physical body, so what can be bad? God created us as we are. I don’t think it matters what the outside looks like. We each have our purpose to fulfill here on earth. We were given what we need to accomplish that purpose. What we do with what we are given? The key to success is tied up with our emotions and attitudes about that we are given. Good emotions create for good results; negative emotions make for bad results or no results, or being stuck in one place wondering why.

                    Next we can accept the love of God for us. God’s love for us knows no bounds, and it is unconditional. When we accept Gods plan for us we are saying, “God does not make junk.” Only man makes junk, and we make plenty of it on our own without any divine intervention.  Where does evil in this world come from? Man. God is only good and wants good things for us. Why do we feel this lack of love, when we know that God loves us unconditionally? It goes back to original sin. Yes, but sin is not as is shown in traditional religious circles. The original sin was separating ourselves from God. By taking on physical bodies, we took on self identity. We were then an individual with all that encompasses the meaning of self. Angels are beings who remained with God and never incarnated into the earth. By this we mean that they never took on a physical body. As God is spirit, so are angelic beings closer to that form than we can ever be as long as we inhabit a physical body.  By entering the material world we are one step removed from the spirit world. Although a portion of our being is spirit, which is our souls. That makes us yearn even the more for that oneness. Oneness with what? To be whole means to be wholly with our creator. As the baby yearns for closeness with its mother, as it was in the womb; we yearn for ones as we were in the beginning. Then, we were one with God. We yearn for that closeness. That is the true meaning of love, and that closeness is what we lack!

          Finally, our relationship with others reflects our relationship with God.  Do we threat our loved ones with the same respect that God treats us? Do we forgive as God forgives? Do we accept others unconditionally? Do we separate the action from the person committing it? The first lesson of love is that we give wholly and totally of ourselves. The selfish portion of our being is obscured in favor of the other. A wise man once said of Jesus that his only thought in his brief life was, “Others father, others.” Are we meant to follow in this example?

          In our relationships with others there are many variations of love. There is romantic love, love a mother and child, and a love that may be called friendship. All these are a shadow of God’s love for us. As co creators with god,- so even as God created us in the beginning, our physical emanations of love with another creates a new earthly body. We call it a baby. Other kinds of love, as with friendship, we are seeking to create another kind of new being. It may be a relationship, a bond, or creation of an activity as with people at our place of work. We are constantly creating in the earth plane, and that is a creation out of love. Each relationship is a duty and a responsibility.

          In creating loving relationships, cooperation is one key element. Be joyous in service to your fellow man! Be joyous to your friends, even to our enemies, for God loves all people and so should we follow in this glorious example. Even if there are hardships or stumbling blocks, keep on trying. It is easy to do right when things are easy. We are tried in the fire means we must also do the right thing when it is hard.  We will be counted for the trying.

As you would be loved, show yourself as loving!  Cherish those things which bring us joy. Delight in those things of God’s creation which bring us peace and righteousness. Be joyous in your love of friends and enemies alike. For mind is the builder, and you must build for yourself a loving life.

          Both the new and old testaments show us that loves means the sacrifice of the thing we care most about. Why is this required in the following instances? “God so loved the world that he gave us his only begotten son.” Abraham was asked by God to sacrifice his only son, literally, on the altar. The answer is to avoid being overly attached to something we love. Emotional attachments such as these create a pull into the earthly or material world. Love is a good thing, but too much of anything - even a good thing – is a sin in that it takes us further way from the love of God. Even the deepest love of another person or thing in the earth plane is a mere shadow of love that exists in the spirit world. Remember that which we build for the soul is much more important than that which we build in the material plane.

So, “Is love a second hand emotion?” In a way, yes. We are reflections of God’s love for us and for everything on the Earth. We are to love others as God loved us. We are co-creators with God. In love, or in hate, we are constantly re-creating the world we live in. Are we creating a world of love?  

In closing here is a quote from I John4:19, “We love because God first loved us!”