The word 'love' is so central to the example lived by Jesus and God the Father, not to forget the Holy Spirit. And yet, because English is relatively impoverished of vocabulary, "love" is used for everything from favorite ice-cream to one's pet rat to one's ancestors or BFF (best friend forever). So it is worth digging under the shiny and care-worn surface of 'love' when hearing the phrase or when declaring that "God is love." Or "faith, hope, love... the greatest of these is love."
In the various meanings and purposes of the word 'love' there are a few common elements. One is about positive affect. Another is emotional power and strength and durability or commitment. Still another facet seems to be something like ownership or possession, but not in the way that property "ownership" means exclusive use-rights; controlling who has access and how the space/time may be used (or is forbidden). Rather, this sort of 'owning' is about holding firmly, not to control but rather to release into the wider world of relationships yet to be. Just like "owning" a description, credit-worthy or blame-worthy of words or deeds, so it is with "owning" your love of a person, place, or thing: you hold it firmly, like a short-term gantry of a moon rocket, or a temporary scaffold that makes possible the construction of a long-standing building. in other words, "love" in the usage about God loving his people (and the reverse, too, how people profess their love of God and God's ways and godliness) can be restated as something like: holding firmly so that God's true nature (merciful, eternal, righteous, and so on) can fully form and then go into the wider world to do God's will.
Thinking about the image of scaffolding more figuratively, perhaps that is a big part of spiritual growth and maturity, too. Things like sacred places (built by humans or naturally occurring), relics and symbols, Order of Worship, spoken liturgy and praises sung in the melodies and words of hymns, rituals during the passage of a lifetime, and so on can structure one's activities and mental (and heart-filled) attention, much like a scaffolding enables a building to grow to finished form. Once accomplished, though, the scaffolding can come down. Its pieces are no longer needed. A beginner seeks and benefits from structures and guidelines and landmarks to navigate with. But a mature person of faith is less concerned with the outward elements and instead dwells on the inward ones (one's heart of hearts).
Putting these speculations of "love" as a kind of holding firm but ready to let go, too; and the idea of scaffolding that holds a person in place during the process of building a durable house of faith, it does seem that love can be unpacked to see its many facets, but that overall the net effect is that God's love amounts to a kind of scaffolding. When fully developed and set free, then a person can venture into the wider world where "all people are God's children," and "there is no Us and Them, stranger or friend" - all fit into one's circle of concern. No matter the denomination, or perhaps even the name of the spiritual tradition, so long as the person opens their heart, pauses from the daily grind to look up or glance around to listen for God, then one's actions and list of achievements only matter to the extent that the heart grows used to glorifying God. If one's actions fail, God will still find a way. The doing matters only because it engages and opens one's heart, not because it succeeds (or fails) in any material sense of achieving a worldly goal (building and grounds committee, mission project, fund-raising goals, etc).
In summary, "God is Love" can be recharacterized to dig under the glossy surface of casually disregarding "love": God is about holding firm so you can mature to the point of no longer leaning on external supports and now can enter into the wider world of sharing that love with others, so that God's will can be done eternally. Whether or not your actions have worldly success or not is less important than the effect of softening one's hard heart and making one's ears and eyes open. Just as a worship service begins with an invocation of God to join with the worshippers, it is not God who has to show up but the reverse: it is a matter of invoking the worshipers to open their ears and eyes and leave aside the distractions and worries of daily living.
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