The epistle reading for today is THE gospel for me, the good news of God’s love. God wants us, each of us and all of us, to experience the fullness of Divine Love in a real way in order that we might share that love with the world. Sitting on a file cabinet across from me is a David Fontana mandala entitled “The Rose of Pure Love” from his book Meditating with Mandalas, (p.118-119). It depicts an unfolding rose superimposed on a cross enclosed in a circle. Fontana says “the rose manifests selfless love, compassion, and spiritual awareness” and suggests that, as we meditate on the mandala, we think of the petals of the rose as the unfolding of love in our own heart. He points out: “All great spiritual traditions teach that love is the essence of all things, that creation arises from and through love and is sustained by love. . . . Love of this kind is . . . a unifying, life-enhancing love, which embraces all that is and which subsumes time and space and all that ever was and will be.”(p.37-38) Oh, that we all might come to be aware of God’s love at work in our lives day by day.

Matthew Fox in commenting on this passage from the epistle in his book Christian Mystics: 365 Readings and Meditations [which I am currently using in my daily meditation] (#13),says: “If God is love, God is encountered in all that we love and cherish—from friends and lovers and children to sunsets and animals, panda bears and whales, dogs, cats, and zebras. If God is love then the music I love, the poems I love, the sunshine I love, the winds I love, the landscapes I love are all theophanies, epiphanies of the Godhead. . . . All love is a taste of the Divine.” He goes on to remind us that “To say that God is love rules out images of God as a great judge in the sky: a peeping tom in the bedroom, an avenger God out to destroy others, or the God of empires and the God of the powerful lording it over the less powerful.” Does that logic speak to you? Does it change your picture of God or cause you to think about what personal image of God you carry in your mind and heart?

“Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.”