...and the greatest of these is love

(free-writing from 5/8/07)
In all of this, I continue to see love as the bottom line: it all comes down to unconditional, vibrant, dirty, sweaty, beautiful, real, honest, difficult love. Love that gives dignity and respect; that honors the image of God in every person, and that comes from the example of God’s love- which is incomprehensible, of unfathomable depths, a forever love, that knows all of our weaknesses, insecurities, brokenness, sin – as well as all of our passions, dreams, desires – and has created us in these ways. And I suppose this is my basic theology – of all things that I doubt and devise, what I wonder about and can’t understand, I know this: that God is love. Strip me of every other belief, but I find this one is ingrained in me, planted in me, inherently known in my soul. I feel I am literally unable to deny this knowledge. It is a part of my DNA, my bones, my skin, and everything I see around me- in the grass or the sky or the people with whom I interact daily. To deny this would be to deny everything I know of the world.