God Is Love.

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God does not just happen to love, nor is it true that he chooses to be love to certain individuals, as if he could just as easily have chosen not to love them.  Rather, it is impossible for God to be God and to act in an unloving way towards anyone.  If God is love, then all God’s actions must be compatible with his love.  This means that his holiness is loving, his justice is loving, and his wrath is loving. . . .  Consequently, any account of hell must see hell as a manifestation of divine love and mercy even if it is a severe side of that mercy. . . .  How could God be love if he draws a line at death and says, “Beyond this point I will look for the lost sheep no more; and even if they try to return, I shall turn them away.”  It seems to me that such a God would not be behaving in a loving way.  In conclusion, I suggest that the problem is not that the universalist sentimentalizes God’s love and forgets his wrath but, rather, that the traditional theologians underestimate God’s love and unhelpfully disconnect it from his justice.

— Gregory MacDonald, The Evangelical Universalist, p. 104

Beyond All Reason

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When love is good and right, I believe, it’s the way God loves us — beyond all reason — and it not only blesses the lives of the lovers themselves but everyone around them.  May we all experience such love in our lives, and may we recognize it and treasure it every second.

— Jill Conner Browne, The Sweet Potato Queens’ Field Guide to Men, p. 238

Love Your Neighbor

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Has the man no hand that you might grasp, no eyes into which yours might gaze far deeper than your vaunted intellect can follow?  Is there not, I ask, anything in him to love?  Who said you were to be of one opinion?  It is the Lord who asks you to be of one heart.  Does the Lord love the man?  Can the Lord love where there is nothing to love?  Are you wiser than he, inasmuch as you perceive impossibility where he has failed to discover it?

— George MacDonald, Your Life in Christ, p. 206

Give More Love

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If there’s bad behaviour, the quickest way of stopping it is to give more love.  That always works, you know.  People say that we must punish when there is wrongdoing, but if you punish you’re only punishing yourself.  And what’s the point of that?

— Mma Potokwane in The Good Husband of Zebra Drive, by Alexander McCall Smith

Until He Finds It

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This God’s love is a redemptive love; a patient, kind love that never gives up (I Corinthians 13).  This Father is a shepherd who, as Jesus taught, does not give up seeking his beloved, wayward sheep, but looks for it until he finds it (Luke 15:4).  His covenant with creation will not allow him to abandon it to its own darkness, but commits him to redeeming it in its entirety.

The love of God in the New Testament, as in the Old, is perfectly compatible with divine wrath and punishment (Heb 12:7-11).  However, such punishment is always a means to an end, and such wrath is never the last word.  The last word is always grace.

— Gregory MacDonald, The Evangelical Universalist, p. 103

Questions

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My faith in God, who is eternally loving and constant even as my understanding grows and changes, makes life not only worth living, but gives me the courage to dare to disturb the universe when that is what el calls me to do.  Sometimes simply being open, refusing to settle for finite answers, disturbs the universe.  Questions are disturbing, especially those which may threaten our traditions, our institutions, our security.  But questions never threaten the living God, who is constantly calling us, and who affirms for us that love is stronger than hate, blessing stronger than cursing.

— Madeleine L’Engle, Stone for a Pillow, p. 140, quoted in Glimpses of Grace, compiled by Carole F. Chase

Friendship in Marriage

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Another important reason to deepen your friendship with your lover is that you are more likely to be kind and loving toward someone you consider a friend.  Friendship is an invitation to be kind and generous to both ourselves and our partners.  When your lover is your friend, you understand that he or she was not put on earth just to make you happy.  Your lover has as much right as you do to have personal habits and quirks.  When we are truly friends with our partners, we show them goodwill and do not just expect to have goodwill shown to us.

— Dr. Fred Luskin, Forgive for Love, p. 154

Separate People

Forgiveness, Love, Marriage, Relationships 0

It is incredibly important, and critical to any thriving marriage, that spouses see each other as separate persons with unique goals and desires.  This is not easy to do.  In the first thrall of love, people tend to look for and find their similarities with each other and to ignore obvious differences.  It’s normal to see the ways a new partner thinks like us and to focus on the things that bind us together…. 

After a while a new couple realizes that for all their similarities they are still different in significant ways.  For many couples, this is a problematic stage, and it requires a good deal of forgiveness.

— Dr. Fred Luskin, Forgive for Love, p. 151-152