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4. What Is God’s Love?

You should discover God’s love. How can we characterize God’s love?
It can be compared to a warm spring day, with white clouds gently floating in the sky, shimmering waves of warm air rising from the ground, and insects flying to and fro. Ants are crawling in and out of their nests, exploring the ground. Pussy willows are in bloom by the stream. Frogs sing new songs of spring, bees swarm and butterflies flutter about. Lying in the grass, you feel a happy, sleepy intoxication come over you. You feel like resting there forever.
This is just how God feels when He finds His ideal partner. God likewise feels as if He were in a beautiful flower garden, with butterflies and bees flying around. When imagining this, do you feel good or bad? Dull-witted people may not be aware that God has feelings. But truly, He feels good. When you run into someone whom you are pleased to see, you grasp his hand firmly and shake hands. When someone greets you joyfully, saying, “Wow, it’s been a long time!” and shakes your hand firmly, does it make you feel good or bad? [Audience: “Good.”] If anyone says it feels bad, go ahead and kick him! Do you like it when someone grasps your hand firmly? [“Yes, we do.”] You mean you want to like it.
How can you say for sure that you like it? You have to know the person to like it. If the person is a stranger, how can you like it when he grabs your hand? But if he is someone you are fond of, then when you grasp each other’s hands, you don’t want to let go. You young ladies here, think of how it will be when you are married. If your husband loves you, you feel as if you don’t need anything else in the world.
You want to live your whole life staying by his side. I enjoy watching a man and woman holding hands, especially when the man’s hand is as rough as a cow’s front hoof.
We enjoy seeing scenes like that in the movies. But if the woman were to say to the man, “Oh, you have such pretty hands,” the man would be offended. This is how it is.
Love is eternal. Love is not two; it is one. It is two becoming one. When a man and a woman become a couple and love each other, they are bonded together. Of course this does not happen literally, but in heart. In fact, they reach a level even higher than this; they touch God’s love. If you live with God’s love, will you become one or not? Think about it. You are destined to become one.
(Blessed Family-1062, 12/22/1970)

When a man and a woman fall in love, they experience all sorts of wonderful things. But if you could taste the profound experience of God’s love, you would find it incomparably greater than any worldly love. When a person has really tasted God’s love, no amount of difficulty or sorrow can defeat him. He dwells in a realm of absolute freedom. Such a realm truly exists; the question is how to find it. (39-240, 01/15/1971)

God’s love can basically be divided into three major types: parental love, conjugal love and children’s love. God’s love is the core that fills them and unites them all. (173-278, 11/23/1975)