Love makes miracles happen — not in some other time and place, but here and now!
Love is miracle power in action, but even the word “love” has been interpreted in so many different and limited ways that it fails to convey the tremendous idea that it represents.
“What the world needs now is love, love, love.” The words blare out from a jukebox. Four letters — L-O-V-E — stand out boldly on a T-shirt. But not all who sway to the music or wear the T-shirts are expressing that elusive idea on even the most primitive basis. Vandalism, destruction, violent protests and even take-overs of public buildings are carried out in the name of love and peace.
Even so, it is good to see that people are talking and thinking of love, that they are searching in the direction of the one idea that can establish peace, harmony, joy and fulfillment in individual lives and in our world as a whole. The more emphasis we place on love, the sooner we will learn to solve the world’s problems, and our own, in the only way they can be finally and definitely resolved, through understanding cooperation with the miracle power of love.
Love has been recognized in many aspects through the years, in the form of romantic love, the face of mother love and other personal expressions of this great idea.
But there is something bigger here than is involved in personal relationships only. It is an idea that can give depth and meaning to all of life and living. It is a concept that can bring harmony and peace among peoples of all nations. It is the source that can provide light and power for a new age in development and discovery that will benefit the whole world. It is God power in action, and it is, as the song says, very definitely “what the world needs now.”
Definition, in a sense, seeks to confine great ideas within the limitations of language. But it is necessary sometimes to define a word as a prelude to the inner realization of a new concept.
So let us consider just what love is, this love that is so great that it can revitalize the world and change not only the lives of individuals, but also the destiny of nations and of humankind as a whole, this love that can provide light, power and all the other “consumables” that are necessary to life in a new and vital age.
What is love?
“Fulfilling of the Law”
Love is the greatest expression of God power that is available to us. It has been described as cosmic energy, electricity of Spirit, the universal power of magnetism and creative energy. It is all of these things, and more.
It is a power that can dissolve differences, enmity and conflict in a moment’s time. Love is the energy that builds, constructs, makes things grow. It also attracts.
A man named Paul wrote many years ago that “love is the fulfilling of the law” (Romans 13:10 KJV). And this is true.
Love is the fulfilling of the highest universal law. Where, under normal circumstances, other powers have failed, love, in its pure state, will succeed. It will accomplish the impossible. It will overcome the wrong that couldn’t be vanquished by human means. It will establish, in individuals and in nations, a new and higher plane of experience in life and fulfillment.
All of the universe is established on law. Each part of God’s creation is powered and guided by innate intelligence and a pattern for living. The laws of the universe are so infallible that astronomers can now calculate exactly where the moon or another planet will be at a certain time on a certain date. The experts can depend on the operation of basic principles in planning a flight into space. They can be sure that universal truths, once established, are not suspended.
But there are many laws not yet understood. It is through inner exploration and discovery that we will come to know and to activate these higher laws, including the laws of love, which will accomplish the many things that are impossible under ordinary circumstances.
What Love Can Do
Love brings about many miracles every day. New discoveries of the scientists are the result of their love for and dedication to their work, research into new and exciting areas of the operation of the physical universe. Love is the inner power that enables them to succeed in the face of untold difficulties, even where other authorities have declared that something couldn’t be done.
Love has more than once worked a miracle in a family, where the love of a wife or mother or father or husband brought about results that would have been considered highly unlikely under ordinary circumstances. A wife’s love and trust helps her mate to go from failure to success. A husband’s love holds fast to a faith in the possibility of healing until it becomes a reality for his wife. A father or a mother helps the “impossible” child to grow into a happy, healthy, productive adult, all through the power of love.
This is what can be accomplished by the application of personal love to a person or a challenge. It is hard to imagine what good will come forth when we learn to apply the principles of love in a universal way, with broad application and unlimited power released for good.
To experience the true fulfillment of the highest laws of love, we must learn to lift love out of personal boundaries and give it a much broader basis in all of our attitudes toward life and toward other persons.
When we can follow the teaching, “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you” (Matt. 5:44 KJV), then we have just begun to glimpse what love is all about, and the greater application of this power which is so needed to transform our world.
On its highest plane, love is greater than error, greater than the greatest error that can be committed. Love has the ability to see past any wrong that is committed and recognize the basic goodness in all persons, which remains constant in spite of anything they do.
We need to know and experience the love that looks past boundaries and sees likenesses, the love that keeps on loving the ideal, even when others fail to express it.
“Love is the fulfilling of the law.” This is true. The love that is greater than any human wrong or limitation is the fulfillment of the highest law of God. It is the only source that is powerful enough to provide light and power for the new age of discovery, on which we have embarked.
If love is the fulfilling of the law, then the opposites of love are infractions of law, and as such they bring their own punishments. Today our whole world is reaping the results of breaking the law by giving top priority to such opposites as hatred, jealousy, self-will, pride, human force and degradation.
The difficulties of the world will not be overcome by human will and force. They have been brought about by violations of the law of love, and they can only be remedied in a permanent way by application of the law of love. This is not a job to be left to world leaders. It is a job for each man, woman and child on this planet. It is only through the right use of the power to love, which God has given us, that we, as individuals, can overcome the wrongs created by violations of the law of love.
If nations are to learn to apply the principle that will bring harmony and peace to the world, then individuals must first learn to live by the law of love in their own lives. We must learn to live by the law of love in our lives.
And the wonderful thing about working for the good of all is that the more we apply the law of love to others and to our world, the greater joy and fulfillment we find in our own lives. Happy, healthy and rich is the person who has learned to love—freely, universally, without strings attached.
Power, Without Force
When we take love out of the limitation of personal attachment, we learn that some of the ideas we have applied in the past no longer hold true.
Loving others doesn’t mean trying to make everybody happy, trying to please others when it means going against what we feel is right. It does mean recognizing their right to make their own choices, holding fast to the belief in their innate goodness, even when we don’t approve of what they are doing.
Love does not demand that others love us in return for our affections. Rather, it pours out its warm rays on all people everywhere and lets the return take care of itself. It never stops loving because it seemingly has not yet changed another person or a situation. It is the nature of love to love, and it continues to pour out good will and compassion, even where there is no visible reponse.
Love is power. It is energy. It is light, electricity, activity. But it is not force. It does not force itself on others, and it will not force its way into your life. It can only enrich your life when you invite it and are willing to work on its terms. And one of its terms is silence.
When you truly love all people everywhere, you don’t have to proclaim the fulfilling of the law. You let love shine for itself and bring about its good results as you simply keep the way open for it to flow out. Results come of themselves. This is the working of the law of love. But an attempt to force nullifies the results of good that may normally be expected when you love.
The Universe Expresses Love
Our whole universe is an expression of love and a testimonial to the power that designed and brought forth this creation in the beginning. And nature is its own greatest example of what can be accomplished through growth, rather than force.
All great things grow, by the laws of nature, from small beginnings. And so love grows in our hearts and in its expression in our world.
We have so much poured out for us to use and enjoy. And we understand, appreciate and love so little of the good creation in which we live.
God must have loved very much, to have created such an orderly, well-planned, beautiful world for us to enjoy. He must continue to love His creation with a love beyond anything we can begin to comprehend, as He continues to pour out His bounty even when it is being misused, hoarded and converted to harmful purposes.
Consider just a few small examples of God’s love expressed in bounty and beauty. The fern is one type of life that is rarely seen by itself. It is usually used as a background for more beautiful or exotic forms, such as blossoms or brightly colored foliage. Yet God didn’t make just one little green fern. He made 10,000 varieties of this particular form of life.
How could He afford to squander so much on so little? He could do it because He had first created an abundance of ideas and of substance from which to bring forth all the other furnishings for His universe. He made so much because He loved, and loves, so much.
He didn’t make just one kind of palm tree, but 1,500 different species. And when it came to insects, He turned out so many varieties that researchers have been busy for generations just trying to identify and name them. So far almost three quarters of a million forms of insect life have been named by the scientists, and more are being investigated all the time.
God not only made the little things, but He gave us big things as well. Astronomers have been able to photograph many billions of stars, and even billions of galaxies (mammoth collections of stars). As telescopes grow more powerful, they continually discover new worlds. So we are only beginning to discover the bigness of God’s love.
When we consider the work of God’s hands, and the prodigality with which He has endowed all nature, it is easy to believe that He cares for us, too, that He also loves and provides for us, His children.
Our part is to fit ourselves into the universal plan of love and to share in the good that is even now prepared for us, awaiting our acceptance of it through cooperation with the laws of love. Even the universal principles, on which we can depend at all times and under all circumstances, are an expression of His Love. Without them, we would be cast adrift on a changing environment. With them, we can learn and grow and become that which God, in love, designed us to be.
Universal Oneness
Another word for love might be unity, representing the universal oneness, that which unifies all segments of God’s creation, so that no life form can exist of and to itself.
We are not now separated, and we never can be separated from any other part of God’s creation. We may think of ourselves as separate, free, a private world unto ourselves, but it is only in our minds that we see ourselves this way. In reality, there is no separation. There is one big universal plan in which we play our own small part, and the more we understand that we are identified with the rest of God’s creation, the better we will fulfill our own particular part of the plan, the happier we will be, and the more we will contribute to the whole.
There is a principle of oneness. It is this:
There is no separation in God’s universe. What hurts one, hurts all. What helps one, helps all.
A wonderful Teacher recognized this Truth when He said, “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me” (Matt. 25:40 KJV) and “Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me” (Matt. 25:45 KJV).
He was not saying that we should help others as a personal favor to Him, though it may have sounded that way to some. He was, with His great wisdom, pointing to a universal truth. And this is it. What hurts one, hurts all. What helps one, helps all.
There is an indescribable link that holds all of us together with an intangible bond of consciousness, awareness or stream of mental life. The good that we think and do stirs the waters ever so slightly and makes some small change in the whole, whether we realize it or not.
Even the harm that we do to ourselves takes just that much from the good that is being expressed by our civilization as a whole. On the contrary, when we help ourselves, not selfishly but simply with the desire to be and to do something greater, then we also help our world—not just the part that we can see, but that whole intangible consciousness that we can never see, of which we are always a part.
Freedom Is an Obligation
There is a great emphasis today on individual freedom, the right of the person to make his own decisions. We even hear people speak of “the new freedom.”
In a sense, there is a new emphasis on freedom in today’s culture, freedom in clothing, freedom in life style, freedom in thinking.
But what is individual freedom? How does it work? And what does it cost?
Recently my husband and I attended a meeting on drugs at the local high school. The speaker was a doctor who had made a study of drug use among teen-agers and was well prepared for the question and answer period that followed his talk. He had spoken to student groups as well as the parent-teacher organization. The meeting we attended had representatives from both groups.
It was interesting to see some of the arguments put forth by the young people on behalf of using drugs.
Some of the boys felt that they should be free to do whatever they wanted, as long as they were doing it to their own bodies, and, presumably, not hurting anybody else.
There were various answers to this argument which were brought out in the meeting. For instance, one under the influence of drugs might do something that would physically harm others. He might try to drive a car and endanger the lives of others. He might damage his physical body so badly that he would become a care for other persons or a drain on society.
But one important point was overlooked. It is the one complete answer to the question, “Why can’t I do something that hurts only me?” It is the argument of love.
In order to be completely free, we must be in thorough accord with the power of love in God’s universe. And in the atmosphere and under the influence of perfect love, we will not do anything that will hurt either ourselves or others. We will know, too, that we cannot hurt ourselves without hurting others as well. Even when we see no particular physical result of our wrong action, it does disturb the intangible something that is our universal sense of oneness.
We do not deserve the privilege of freedom until we have learned to live in the atmosphere of love.
The “good government” promised by the millennium does not start necessarily with people in high places. It starts with the individuals learning to govern themselves and to take command of their lives. In our interdependent society, this is the only way that we can start to build good government on a larger scale, by learning to govern ourselves.
Even the person who is claiming the freedom to abuse his body, if he likes, is surrendering that freedom by putting himself in bondage to a drug or a habit. It is a poor substitute for the freedom to grow and to build in God’s good way.
Where love comes first, in our minds and our hearts, freedom has to be both constructive and satisfying. Love itself makes us conscious of the bond of oneness, and we know that what hurts one, hurts all, and what helps one, helps all.
“God Is Love”
All of the world’s great religions, the ones that have survived the tests of time, have, in one way or another, emphasized love and used the word almost synonymously with God.
- Shinto declares, “Love is the representative of the Lord.”
- Hinduism says, “One can best worship the Lord through love.”
- The Jewish faith admonishes, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might” (Deut. 6:5 KJV) and “thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself’ (Lev. 19:18 KJV).
- Christianity puts it simply “God is love” (I John 4:16 KJV).
The place of love in religious teaching is not the result of some plot among the hierarchy but is the natural result of illumined souls seeking a greater understanding of the universal power in the universe.
Someone has said, “Hell is not to love any more.”
There are many different interpretations of hell, but this is a good description of the inner torment and torture that comes to the person who loses, or rejects, his God-given ability to love. This is not only an ability. It is also a privilege and responsibility. Hell is not a place, but a state of mind, and great is the misery of one who no longer gives of himself in love, who has no deep-down expression of the warmth and glow of affection, good will and oneness.
Even a little love, expressed within personal limitations, is better than none. But a great deal of love, poured out without regard for boundaries, is unlimited in its ability to resolve differences, to attract, adjust, free and magnetize the lives it touches, and indirectly, the whole world consciousness.
The various personal expressions of love — love for family, love for friends, love between a man and a woman, the love of a mother for a child — all are good, and all play a part in the life of the well-adjusted, happy individual. But they are not all of love.
Universal love goes beyond boundaries of family, neighborhood and even country. It does it without making the personal expression any less, but it does extend out to bless and to encompass all people everywhere, and all of God’s creation.
If we sit back and wait for the world to love us first, we will have a long, tiresome wait. But if we go out to meet it with love in our hearts and joy in our thoughts, we will find warmth and friendship wherever we go. And we will leave a blessing when we depart.
Love comes to meet the one who sends it out. It returns like a boomerang. But it simply can’t get through the shell of the one who sits waiting for it to knock first.
“Hell is not to love anymore.” But if hell is the withholding of love, and the consequent torment, then heaven is the free giving of God’s love to all, and the resultant joy and sense of well being. And heaven is ours for the claiming.
Love is, in reality, the key to our own personal millennium, the perfect awareness and expression of harmony, health, joy and good government.
© 1986, Winifred Wilkinson Hausmann
All rights reserved by the author.
Reprinted with permission.
