At the center of it all

At the center of it all is love, before anything else was, there was love.  Love was with God, love was God.  The Triune relationship radiated love into all that there was, it was enough in itself.  It sought to share what it had, thus creation.  No matter how dark the days seem, we can look back to what was before anything else was, and see what was meant to be.  Love reigns.  Love is supreme.  Love was first.  When I can't trust myself, when my motives seem askew, when I'm not sure if I'm wrong or right, up or down, I can look back to that which was before I ever made a notion in this universe.  Home is found in the returning, I must go back to my origins, what I was meant for.

Some may taste death before tasting love.  Some may never experience love in their whole life.  What of the beaten child?  What of the widowed wife?  Of the heartbroken man?

Love does not shy away from such questions.

Rather, it gives the world radical freedom, so that it can love it for what it is, not what it is controlled to be.  In order to be a world, the world must be free to be a world.  We need not pretend, we need not dress up and put on a pretty mask, we can name our pain, with all the truth we can muster.  Love encourages such things.

But this is not the end of the story.

Where we came from is the same place where all is headed.  Redemption cannot be hidden, it was, is, and finally will be.  All of history flows in the streams of eternity, we must widen our gaze, we must broaden our minds, and take in more.  We can only find our place in the stream of love that also includes all else.  Here, we are all one, yet all unique.  We find our independence, interdependence, and dependence all in one.  We fade into that which is Great.

We find what was at the beginning, that beckons us ask the questions of what is temporary, only to find that which is forever.  Our pain is but a tapestry being woven by the strokes of the Almighty into everlasting joy.

Lord, give me the faith to believe this.