God Is Love

There is a joy so deep, so wide, so all enveloping that words cannot express your gratitude to God.

Those who are parents will understand, perhaps, a little better than others. Picture to yourself your child separated from you for what, to you, seems almost a century of time; separated from you and perhaps learning to love another in your place. The parent’s heart aches for their little one, their arms are empty and they wonder to themself with real anxiety whether their child will remember them. No language can portray all that that sentence holds!

Knowing God and the wonderful gifts that He gives again and again, you know that it would be all right; just as the parent knows that the day will come when they will hold love in their arms once more. The day has come when once again, by God's grace, the Spirits are able to demonstrate in a physical way His presence in your life; in your life, in your thoughts and in your heart. What God has given once He never takes away! You are firmly in the fortress of His heart and nothing; time, the world, temptation, nothing shall be strong enough to force open that barricade which God has built around His child.

God has you fast. If at times He seems a little distant from you, well, perhaps it is done not only to test your own resources but also that you may miss Him and the Spirits a little. When the time of physical separation has elapsed you shall welcome your loving companions and friends who, in a way you little understand, guard and surround your life every minute of the night and day.

Do not be deceived if sadness has crept a little close; do not be dismayed. In the future all will be worked into the plan laid down by the Master-Mind, and you shall see then every hour of twilight turned into the Light which is everywhere in the realms of the Spirit. That Light which has been brought together with so much effort and is there in so much force. Brought together by the children of the earth by their little and big tasks, by their great and small troubles. Out of the tears shed during their earth's experience has been created the River of Life which is also of comfort as well.

God has you in His care and tells you to never again listen to the suggestion that otherwise is the case. God has you fast in His care and the years shall tell!

Think awhile on that simplest yet most comprehensive theme of all; God is Love. It seems so hard to gather this in; so difficult a lesson to learn; so impossible to remember when the warm, definite, visible sun is shrouded by cloud. It is so hard to grasp that even the dark days reveal His understanding purpose, and that by the withholding for a space that which the heart cries out for, power and wisdom and progress are being added to every one!

God is Love! Say it with greater emphasis if the night is dark. When the stars can be seen it is easier to believe; when the moon throws its silvery beams into those veiled corners where doubt tries to hide, then it is almost simple to believe that your Creator is not only Jehovah, but the Christ and Father. But when face to face with the ravages of disease; and with that which is worst of all, the ravages on the happiness of the individual by the evil forces that lurk on either side, when face to face with these seeming disasters the cry rings out with double emphasis that God is Love, and you shall yet have the strength and the vision to grasp it and see it too!

The days of preparation seem over-long to the children when it is winter-time. They ask if summer is ever coming and the answer is in time. The child is satisfied for the moment, but again longing springs up fresh and insistent and again they cry out for the summer. The wise parent then takes their little one to the trees or to the hedges, showing them here the first signs of the spring. The child, looking at the green buds, is comforted, but not for long. When the wind blows cold and winter seems to have retraced its steps again they ask if summer is coming. What has happened, has all gone wrong? The parent then takes them to the first flowers, white and gold and purple, trying to make a show in conditions which seem absolutely against them. But no, those conditions are their right environment. These flowers are sent when bleakness is all around; sent with their message of hope, sent as a reminder of what nature is holding in store for the days to come! In the joy of their beauty the child is silenced, but when these have passed away they want more assurances still that summer shall be with them in reality.

So as the days pass their attention is directed to this and to that, and one fine morning they wake to a transformed scene; the cold wind has gone and the grey clouds have passed far away. The sun, with its warmth and its comfort, is shining upon them and upon those they love so well. On those who, do not forget, also watched and waited with them.

Take from this simple little illustration enlightenment; that realisation which shall tell you that all is well. Well in the way God has purposed from the beginning, and well as only a Father could have conceived in love surpassing all imagination. Yet remember that those in the Spirit World who are older in experience, who have seen many winters merged into spring, understand that to the child, so dependent on outward and visible signs, the waiting seems over long and despair creeps very close. Even in the waiting God's love is shown in a variety of ways. He does not say to humanity: "Wait with faith" only, but He gives these small signs of new life; those little insignificant details which, very often, are passed over by you as "chance". If you look at your life with spiritual sight you will see the outward and visible indication that summer is on its way. When, as is sometimes the case with nature, the summertime is broken by storm and chill, remember that in the things of the Spirit; those which have been brought to your side by concentration and by the wish for service in the past, that the summer-time of the Spirit cannot retreat into autumn of winter again. There you get your contrast. It may be that that summer-time has its days of chill and lack of brightness, but they shall pass. But what shall prevail, and what does prevail, although you do not see it, is the brightness of the Life Eternal.

God is Love and He does not invite His children to attempt to climb the steep hill of experience and then, when they have got so far and are tired and distressed by the roughness of the path, He does not lose interest in them because of their complaining and turn to another to see if they will do better. God has said "Come up hither and I will lead you all the way", and when the boulders seem to obstruct your path and blows from the enemies of the Christ beat you to your knees, He does not relax or retreat one inch from that invitation! It simply means that for a space you refrain from pressing on. You do not "rest" because the only real rest is in trying to get nearer to the Christ. But you pause awhile and the temptation comes to look back over the path you have followed, and it seems almost darker and harder in retrospection than when you were treading it in faith.

Here it is that sometimes God’s children grow very sad; so much strain, so much suffering, and the will to proceed is worn out. This is a so distorted version of what really is the case. The shadows have been pressing and the body is feeling the brunt of that and other conditions as well. So it is quite easy to build up a picture of failure and even of disaster of a most terrible kind in the imagination. Yet it is all so different really. The majority of pilgrims pass through this phase, but when they are freed from it they smile.

Once the gaze is firmly fixed on the Christ there is no going back; no resting by the wayside. You shall yet find, later on, that the sadness and the disappointment and the disillusionment over self took you, unconsciously, a little further up. So you see in reality that there is no resting once the Call has been heard.

If only the wish was there to do a little better than you did nothing, nothing that has happened in your life shall be found hereafter that did not provide the necessary threads for the working out of the pattern for the soul's redemption. That is God's purpose with all, with the world; with those who have passed out of physical existence and those who will take it on. This is the purpose of the Father and you shall find, without qualification of any kind, that God is Love in so comprehensive a way that even those who think they are estranged from Him shall for ever be gathered in by the golden cords of love and bound to the rest of humanity, for the cords, each one, are held by God.

You cannot go astray, not for long. You think sometimes that through evil or through some mishap you are outside the Fold of the Good Shepherd, but no! Those outer walls exist in imagination only. Where His children are; out to the farthest corners of the earth, where ignorance and perhaps sin prevail, away out beyond everything is the protection of God's Love. They are not outside His Fold; they are His sheep and the Good Shepherd seeks for the missing ones; missing perhaps to you, lost indeed to themselves. But the Shepherd knows where to find His sheep and He never rests until He has gathered them in. What has been and is today shall be for ever; the Shepherd and His sheep, and the Good Shepherd does not lose one.

Open your heart and mind and say to the Christ: "Here I am, I come to You!" That is a gift, a gift in the eyes of God and the only gift that He ever asks in return for so much lavished on you. "Here I am, take me and make me as Thou wilt". The Shepherd has not to seek, for the sheep are drawn back to the Centre by their own desire.

There you get the gospel of hope and of service too. Every one who comes willingly and gladly to unite with Love is serving their fellow members as a whole, because they are adding one more to the side of good. That thought, that wish to belong solely and only to God, influences others to do the same. Even by your smallest thought, your tiniest desire for service, you are helping in the saving of the world.

Does it not inspire you, does it not make the earth recede to think that even you, with all your weaknesses and frailties, are able to help the Saviour to redeem the world. Humanity is forever calling for comfort and for aid, and humanity has got to be reckoned with in a way that the complacent altogether overlook. You are all on the same rope, and do not dare pause or linger because so much remains to be done. Your strength is their strength, just the same as the strength of those who have fought and struggled and passed out of physical life is your strength. You cannot detach yourself either from the highest or from the lowest, the unity between the children of God is inseverable and will be for all Eternity.

But you can hinder the purpose; you can divert the strength; and you can use up the power which is wanted for those weaker than yourself. This is why you suffer such grief when you fail the best that is within you.

Your soul knows that it is strong enough to stand strong and yet power is taken which is needed desperately by those who are lower down the hill. That is the position as it stands. The Christ calls to those who have climbed this distance or that. Calls to them to be strong, not only for themselves but for those who, as yet, find it impossible to be anything but weak. As you struggle with that physical self, which gives so much trouble, it seems to you, so shall you find that the strength and the power is there and it was only the shadows frightening you by what was not. The power is there and you shall rise in strength and in determination and continue the climb, certain that each step higher up is sending back to those behind the will and the wish to climb as well.

Sometimes you find it a little hard to remember that the Spirits are with you so much in sympathy. But you are so united in purpose, in aim and in ambition that it should not be too hard for you to get a little more of their view and to see a little more plainly that bodyguard of love, that strong protection which the Christ has provided.

It should not be too hard for you to realise that it is there in an unlimited degree. They are friends, they are more even than that, sacred though friendship may be. They are as one in love, in experience, in sorrow, and shall be one in joy in the days to come. That unity is possible only because of the fact that God is Love, and that He has distributed amongst the Spirits as much as they can hold. A little of that Divine Love which binds you not only together, but so closely to Him that it would be impossible for an enemy to intervene.

You are held by the Christ through storm and tempest; held, protected, guarded, and fought for. In your heart you should acknowledge Him, not only as King of Kings and Lord of Lords, but Love; Love Divine, eternal, unlimited and inseparable. That is the position of the children and their Heavenly Father and nothing can alter it. Let that thought sink into your heart and mind and bring its own sweet peace and comfort; the comfort of knowing that "I am His and He is mine for ever and ever."

Love is so insistent that it longs to show itself in an outward and visible way, because those upon earth are right to be very dependent on the outward and the tangible when it concerns themselves. It is impossible for you, so pressed in by physical conditions, to remember the power of love unless you see it and are told of it. That is why the Spirits long to come to remind you again and again of those who watch and wait with you; watch and wait until the morning of Spiritual life.

With a united heart thank God for His goodness and His graciousness. It has been a wonderful example of the working out of the promises given when you were entrusted to the Spirits care. Thank the Father that He has not only fulfilled the promise but has interpreted it in a way that only the Divine Mind could think of.

So try and join with the Spirts in giving thanks, for in that thanksgiving you will find your gift returned; some a hundred fold; some sixtyfold and some thirtyfold, according to the value of the gift that you could offer.

Understand that things are relative, in this way. It is all summed up in that often quoted statement that "as you sow so shall you reap; as you give so shall you also take". But always, with the things of the Spirit, the taking is immeasurably greater; and, to your mind, the giving is so terribly small.

Is that not like the Father! Can you imagine Love weighting the scales so that they may be equal, to give you what you, out of your poor resources, can give Him? When looked at in a direct way you can realise that things can never be equal between the Father and His children and never will be. The Father watches over the growth of the baby-soul; He alters the nature of His vigil as the child grows up and then when maturity is reached He gives gifts of power, of opportunity and of right desire. Later still again He alters that which He offers in so free and so lavish a way. He gives the gifts of the Spirit; that inward peace, that joy beyond all expression, and then the soul comes into its own.

Physical standards are of no use when you are thinking about God. Many a parent today, some out of necessity; which shall be added on the gain side hereafter because of the pain it caused, has to take as much, or more, than they gave, from the child they raised. There are some who demand but have not given! These have sorrow to face and self is not an easy enemy to overcome.

But the Christ, your Father, gives and gives again, and you cause Him pain when you shut yourself off from His gifts. That's the difference between humanity and God. You cannot ask too much, and your Heavenly Father cannot give too much. All that is necessary is the attitude with Him which makes a free and open channel through which His love can flow, growing in volume as you prepare yourself to meet it. As you grow so is it possible to increase that which is there in such abundance. Thus united, undivided by the world, you find your happiness in your Creator and your Creator finds His happiness in you.

So hope that wounds are healed and that the Strength, which is so closely allied to Love that you cannot tell the difference, that the Strength of the Spirit will send you on your way rejoicing, because the Christ has called you to follow Him!

God blesses you with peace, with vision and with that joy of achievement which shall be your own! God sends down His courage, His strength, His hope and the certainty that He is in command and that all is well!

This message was first given in 1924 through Winifred Moyes.

© The Greater World Christian Spiritualist Association 2025

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