Romance and Divine Love

I was thinking about how God is love, and how human love is the greatest quality in the world because it both simulates Divine love, and is part of it. Like our Christian walk with God, love is both a blessing and a responsibility. It’s a blessing because it is a gift from God, and a responsibility because love involves the daily commitment to act in a manner worthy of God; seeking the truth, putting others before ourselves, making a continuous choice to act with kindness, patience, and forgiveness, and mirroring Christ’s sacrificial love in doing so.

And when you consider it, that is a lot like what happens in romantic love. In the beginning, what we call ‘falling in love’ seems to be bestowed upon us rather than being a conscious choice - it finds us before we can choose it (although our choices clearly enable it). It starts as a blessing that falls upon us, rather like a free gift of grace, but then comes the responsibility to work in relationship to turn it into something Divine, amazing and long-lasting. To that end, love between creature and Creator, and love between beloveds, reflect each other, in that both begin as gifts of grace but find their fullness in the daily choice to nurture, sacrifice, and reflect the Divine.