Where Love Reigns Supreme
Uranda November 23, 1952
In the outworking of God's love on earth there are many adjustments that are essential to the sharing of God's love. We have recognized that it is through Divine love that centering becomes possible. No matter how much the human mind may think to try to remain centered, without love it is impossible, and the first and the greatest of the commandments admonishes us to love God with all that we are. We have shared meditations on that point many times, but I would tonight that we might come to know more deeply, more fully, the reality of our King's provision, in His Kingdom on earth, in this matter.
We have recognized that without centering in love the control factors in truth cannot become effective and the design factors in truth cannot manifest. They become spoiled, distorted, and that which does appear is far different from that which God designed. The reality of the Kingdom requires that control and design shall manifest through the working of God's power. Fundamentally we have acknowledged that all power does come from God and that the power that destroys is from God but not under God's control; it is being used by the human agency, wilfully or ignorantly, to spoil God's design. When God's power is used by human beings to spoil God's design we have a horrible incongruity, something which by its very nature is abhorrent. But man has lived for so long with the distortion patterns of being, with that which is decaying and dying, that he has become used to the abhorrent factors in existence and accepts them as being natural. They are in fact unnatural, but in the self-active expression of the human being misusing God's power to spoil God's design we have the natural result in the condition which we find in the world.
I always feel at a loss for words when I approach the subject of God's love, the love of the LORD of Love. Our KING so loved the world, the earth and the people in it, His whole creation, that He came into the world to restore that pattern of relatedness, that whosoever believeth in Him, the LORD of Love, might not perish but have everlasting life. What does it mean to believe in the LORD of Love? What is there in your consciousness tonight which will allow you to have a deeper awareness of what it means to believe in the LORD of Love?
What if every question, if every problem, all the things which might be deemed a necessity in any way, shape or form, could be dismissed from consciousness so that the whole attention, the whole of the heart or feeling nature, the whole of the mind and the whole of the body, might be brought to point in this one thing? When there is love on earth, for instance, between a man and a woman, and it is real and it has a spiritual quality, it has a depth, the mutuality of that love establishes a timelessness. When there is a centering in relationship to that love, other things, though they be essential, are seen as secondary to love, no matter how important they might be, no matter how necessary it may be to do the essential work or consider other matters. It is not that they are set aside as meaningless, but the quality of that which is known and felt, the timelessness, and the recognition that that love is primary, gives meaning to everything else. Without that love what meaning would there be? Without love somewhere, somehow—not necessarily limited to marital love—but without love somehow, no human being can live a normal life. Without love there is only emptiness, coldness, meaninglessness. Whatever else there may be, only love can give it meaning. Whatever the need may be, only love can provide the starting point for filling that need. No matter what problem, without love there is no way of really solving the problem, no matter how much the human being may try. The basic pattern of love open to each and every one, without regard to anything else, is the most precious of all, the most priceless of all aspects of love: the love of God, the love of the LORD of Love.
When that love begins to work in and through the human being, and it is held sacred, the human consciousness and heart remain true to it, changes begin to take place. All changes are fundamentally adjustments either to the pattern of life or to the pattern of decay. Sometimes the human being resists the necessity of adjustment, but without adjustment the true expression of love is impossible, because the means of manifestation must become fitting to the expression of love. The endlessness of love is that which makes eternity desirable. Without love one could rightly abhor the thought of eternity. But love is of sufficient importance so that from God's standpoint the centering of all things, including God Himself, is established in love. Our KING, Supreme in heaven and earth, is the LORD of Love, the Apex of All. Love, then, is of sufficient importance so that from the standpoint of God's design, of expression in His own Being, disregarding the human being for the moment, in the Body of God made up of many God Beings the One who provides the apex is the LORD of Love. Not the Lord of Truth, not the Lord of Life, not the Lord of something else in the various aspects of God's Being, but the LORD of Love. He is the Center, the Supreme One, the Apex.
From the standpoint of God, then, in relationship to God Himself, Love is Supreme. To that end we have the second shortest verse in the Bible. The shortest one was caused because someone failed to recognize the truth of the second shortest. The shortest verse in the Bible has two words; the second, three: the simple statement, “God is love.” The shortest verse in the Bible: “Jesus wept.” Why did He weep? Not for the cause that human beings suppose. Not because Lazarus was in the tomb, not because all the others were weeping. He told them plainly, even before He wept, “Lazarus is not dead, but sleepeth.” But when Mary of Bethany forgot to remember that God is love and that the power of God is supreme, when she betrayed the trust He had placed in her to hold the pattern, when Mary doubted God's love, when Mary, who to the Master symbolized the centering of all the fulfilments for which He hoped on earth, yielded to the pattern of appearances and broke and became subject to the things to which the world is subject, then He wept; for in that moment He knew that what could have been would not be. He wept because there was not one, not even Mary of Bethany, who remembered “God is love,” who remembered the importance of staying centered regardless of appearances—not one, of those who should have provided the pattern in that hour. I feel the question rise in your mind with respect to the Disciple John. The pattern of which I am speaking had no direct relationship to him. I am not suggesting that John failed to maintain the pattern. I am talking about something else.
“Jesus wept.” Do you think the Master's life was without love? No. Mary of Bethany was His sweetheart. Mary of Bethany provided the centering, from the standpoint of the negative aspect of Being, for that outworking for which He was on earth, for which He labored. That provision of God's love we can say should have held—but Jesus wept. Why? Because the one whom He had trusted to hold the centering of the pattern in what we would speak of as the negative response of the world, to provide the key, forgot her responsibility. She forgot God's love, and “Jesus wept.” Mary yielded to the wrong precedent. Since the fall there was no other precedent but that of failure; but there was a precedent going back beyond the fall of man, and God's love had to have meaning on earth. There was a keynote of response in the outworking of things, a point where love reigned supreme, where nothing else mattered, and when something else was allowed to matter, Jesus wept.
So from the standpoint of God, from the standpoint of our LORD on earth, love was first. He said the first commandment had to do with love, God's love: to love the Lord thy God with all that you are. When there is this yielding to God's love, letting go in it, what happens? In the world there are crystallizations of every sort, distorted patterns wherever one may turn, nothing exactly the way God intended it to be. In the whole realm of humanity there is that which is moving toward that pattern of fulfilment, the Divine manifestation of the Divine Design, in the flesh of human beings, in their minds and hearts, but so often something other than God's love matters first. “God is love.” The centering of God is love; the expression of God is love; the nature of God is love. If, then, the reality of love is allowed to begin to work through the human heart there is the beginning of the relatedness with God. But the working of that love must do something. It must melt the crystallizations. It must bring about a yielding which allows adjustment to the Divine pattern, so that the delicate factors of the Divine Design may begin to have meaning.
One of the strangest things to me—and, I might mention, to all the angels of heaven—is this: That human beings so often seem to imagine that the essential adjustments are difficult, something to be resisted, something to be avoided as much as possible, that there is somehow suffering in those adjustments. Such an attitude reveals a tremendous ignorance with respect to love and truth and life. One of the greatest joys which any man or woman may know is the joy of going through the patterns of attunement or adjustment necessary to the ever-increasing reality of love, God's love, in life. Instead of resisting the necessities of change the human being should accept them willingly, gladly.
How can the body be healed if there be no change in the body according to the Divine Design? It can't. Only as changes come by reason of the control according to the Divine Design can healing come to the body. Only so can healing come to the mind or heart. These changes are not painful unless the human being makes them so. And if they are painful they are not the true changes; they are partial changes wherein factors other than God's are allowed to play a part, where human factors are imposed. Getting used to God's love is a delightful experience. Remaining true to God's love gives a sense of wholeness and wholesomeness, a consciousness of something holy and sacred. There is such a sweet spirit which pervades, and all fear is cast out, and there is no cause for suffering in any real sense. There is relaxation. There is letting go. There is yielding. There is a response which permits God's power to make changes. How deep does God's love go? To the intellectual level, so that one may say, “I love God”? If so, the moment the attention is centered on the necessities of our daily lives God's love is forgotten. But if it goes deep, deep into the heart, the feeling nature, and penetrates the body, it is there no matter what may demand attention, no matter what one may be under the necessity of doing. It is there all the time.
There is no adequate way to convey in words that which love is. It can be called a fire, and that would be true, but some would be afraid of it. It can be called a consuming fire; not because it destroys, but because it enfolds and contains, because it takes unto itself that which yields—to change, not to destroy it; not to bring it to an end, but to give it meaning. There are so many delicate factors in love, so very delicate, and only as there is an appreciation of delicate design, in truth, can the full beauties of love be known. The human being cannot be taught by lecture, by book, by blackboard design, just what adjustments must take place within himself with respect to this fulfilment. A general idea can be given, principles can be portrayed, but there is that something in each and every one which can appear only in the working of the spirit of love itself in the individual—not something that can be known in advance, not something that can be intellectually predetermined. It is something which can be experienced only in the working of love within oneself. And it cannot be described. That which is true of one may not be true of another, with respect to these delicate factors—in other words, each one has a peculiar design.
In the basic factors we are all alike, in the fundamental. And those things can be recognized and appreciated and known. They can be more or less described. They become common knowledge. But the human being who limits himself to that never knows what it is to live. There must be an unfolding of something beyond the range of that which is intellectually predetermined. There must be the outworking of something which is absolutely unique to the individual himself. It is in the delicacy of the design that the variations in characteristics become known. We may classify any person on earth as a human being. That is a very general classification—all human beings. Then we can make the division between male and female, and everyone is in one classification or the other. But that which is a basic fact does not make the distinction of Being evident. The delicacy of the Divine Design which relates to you is important to the fulfilment of your life, the reality of your ministry of service, the reality of your Being, what God intended you to be. But without love those delicate factors of design, spirit, nature, can never take outer form. They never find expression. They never have any meaning to you or to anyone else. So, while you may be a human being, you are not what you ought to be. You may be a man or a woman, but you are not what you ought to be.
How shall this come forth? By great intellectual attainments? By inventive genius? By mental gymnastics? By human emotionalism? By giving way to feelings of various sorts? Oh no. Of course wherever love is at work there are feelings, but it is a matter of letting that love, that fire, that feeling, work through in the sense of a centering, in the sense of an unfolding. It is such a revealing thing to the eyes of love, but if there are no eyes of love it reveals nothing. And that delicacy of design reaches back into the very essence or heart of God. It is this that characterizes our LORD and KING. If we think of Him simply as a King in some far-off place, a Lord, perhaps, more or less unapproachable—for those who do not know love it may be true, and it is—then you do not know Him: these delicate factors of Being, so intricate in design, so moving, so all-inclusive, so always new, so ever-changing and yet always the same. That sounds like a paradox to human ears, “ever-changing and yet always the same”—always the same in love but never the same in Being. Always there is that quality of newness, that quality of aliveness, which is beyond human words to describe. These essences, these delicate things which cannot be described, must be allowed an opportunity of movement within oneself. If one is so crystallized in fundamentals that the delicate things are always crushed or given second place, or some such thing, there can never be the unfolding of Being, there can never be the joy of true living, of true loving.
The LORD of Love. Why is eternity a reality? Fundamentally because of love. When one begins to know love as it centers in our KING, the LORD of Love, one begins to realize that even eternity can never exhaust the newness, the wonder, the joy of love. Love, true love, is something that never grows old. It is not subject to time. It is not subject to space or distance. It simply is, and it is eternally new. If there is anything which is not showing forth the quality of eternal newness it is because of a lack of love, a lack of centering in the God of Love, the LORD of Love.
What is it that makes newness, in the sense of restoring physical health, the restoration of the body to the Divine Design? There must come a newness, and the oldness must pass away—not oldness necessarily in the sense of years but from the standpoint of something that is out of design, something which is crystallized, something that is not allowing the delicate factors of Being to appear, so it grows old. It can grow old in five minutes, shall we say. I have met people where things grew old in five minutes, and one was glad to get away. But where God's love is working there is an eternal newness, something different, something alive, something refreshing, something delightful, something thrilling, something so deep and satisfying. In this ever-newness we have the secret of eternal aliveness, which is called Eternal Life. Without that ever-newness of love, God's love, extended life is impossible, because the crystallizations take over and that which is not of the Divine Design becomes evident in control. This ever-newness is the living quality of Being, and without it sometimes human beings reach a point where they so yield to the adversary that they even say such a horrible thing as, “What is the use?” What a depth of something too horrible to name!—“What's the use?”—the meaninglessness that brings such an expression. And where does that come from? From a lack of God's love. God's love is sufficient for all.
There is an interesting thing about our LORD and KING. His love is great enough to include every human being. His capacity to love has never been exhausted. There are not enough beings in heaven or earth, or both together, to exhaust His capacity to love. He has enough for you, and He can share all the love of your being and not exclude anyone else—a place for you in the heart of the LORD of Love. And it will not limit you. It will not make you something less than you are. It will make you something more than you are. It will not circumscribe you in the sense of anything distorting or limiting, but it will give you meaning to yourself and to others.
Blessed ones, love isn't something that you can get all in a lump, as if you might have some trucker deliver a ton of it. Love is something that flows and unfolds and moves. Some people seem to imagine that if they have love, then suddenly, as if they got the ton of it, everything would be thus and thus and thus and so, instantly, in a moment. But love is there for every human being on the face of the earth. It doesn't come by the ton; it comes by the measure of living. It is something that has to express through; and its intricate designs, its changing patterns, provide that something which increases the capacity to know God's love. God in His wisdom arranged that eternity would be available for the expression of love, not that it should be delivered in a lump and when that is gone it is done. It is not something that can be put in a box or jar or can or something, and stored. It is something which in its movement reveals itself. The quality of that movement is determined by the reality of the love that is involved in its unfolding expression.
When one begins to know love one begins to realize that it actually is primary, not secondary, and that God was not arbitrary when He pointed to that fact in the two great commandments. It is primary—it is the first thing, not the second. Once that primary thing is moving there begins to be a relatedness to other things: first to God, and then, according to the Divine Design in the outworking, one to another and to all created things. But you never see love twice the same. If you miss it in any moment, what you miss will never, in all of eternity, be available to you again, because it is never in any two moments exactly the same. All the eternity of the future will be taken up with the natural unfoldings of love in the future, and there is no time in all of eternity to return to something that was missed in the past. If you miss it in any moment it is gone forever. And God's love is too precious to miss, too important to throw away. We have seen that with God it is primary. The LORD of Love centers the Body of God, the Apex of it All—first, supreme. Human beings think to make it secondary? Oh no. If they do they destroy themselves, and day by day throw away, literally throw away, God's richest blessings. Once they are missed they can never be known, because they are gone.
That which is today will appear today, if we let love have its way. One should not waste time in vain regrets with respect to what is past. That will do no good. But one should learn the lesson well enough so that one doesn't today throw away that which should be known today; for God's love is available today, available to you. If you do not let it unfold today the opportunity is gone. Each new moment brings a new opportunity—and a whole eternity before us, endless—for the unfolding of the ever-changing wonders of God's love. Until you begin to appreciate the delicacy of design, the things which can be known only as they unfold—not by the word that is spoken, not to be put in black and white somehow—until one begins to let that delicacy of design have real meaning in oneself, one cannot begin to know the LORD of Love. But you cannot know the delicacy of design unless you are honest, faithful and true, unless you let the truth make you free by reason of your centering. There is no other way of centering than this, by reason of God's love. If you would know the ever-newness of God's love it must be through His love, according to the delicacy of design which God ordains. It is to this end, this fulfilment, that the LORD of Love Himself came into the world, so that instead of excluding love from your life and decaying, you might accept love in your life and share the ever-newness of God Himself.
© emissaries of divine light
