God is love. This Mama who once had to bury her own baby wants to know how we know. I had been told that God is love since I went to Sunday School where a teacher with missing front teeth and a black men’s stocking cap and an old wool coat with mismatched buttons grinned as she said from her own weary bones, “God is love”. No doubt the teacher believed it. I wanted to believe it too. Through my adult eyes I remembered the woman with the toothless grin and a heart on fire for Jesus. How could it be?

How do you explain to soul sucking grief what love is…and does?

This Mama went to seminary to see what she could see. It was there that I learned about love which taught me a lot about God. Love is a feeling that can be named like a noun. It is also an action, a decision, a verb, a movement, an inclusive dance. It is the community of the Trinity inviting you to live within it—the same community that crosses the line between breath and death and holds it all. God is love.

God of Love, may we all come to know deep within our bones the sanctuary of your Trinity and all the love that lives there. Amen.

Rev. Karen Locken, LCM Board Member, 2013-2019

Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.

-1 John 4:7-8