God's Love

Yesterday Sunday, I happened to drop by a seminar by Ang Lingkod Ng Panginoon. I was late but, based on the handouts, I deduced that the topic of the talk was God's Love. Interestingly, that was also the topic of the first talk during the Christian Life Program conducted by the Single for Christ (which I attended last month).

What happens then is that, during the discussion group sharing right after the talk, participants would talk about God's love by pointing to instances in their lives where they've experienced it.Usually, these instances range from the mundane, like waking up to the sun rising every day, to the profound, like surviving a major sickness or financial dilemma.

These are the stories of God's love. We recount the many blessings we've received and we recall the many things that are pleasant in our lives. All these are valid but there are absences in the story lines that we need to take note.

What I'm talking about are the many travails, the many ordeals that we go through every day. What about the problems we have at work? The disasters that plague our relationships? The conflicts that arise within us? Are these worthy enough to be mentioned too when we talk about God's love?

Or maybe, these shouldn't be in the discussion because, after all, these are not signs of God's love but of His absence instead. Or is it?

Herein lies our dilemma when we talk about God's love because it calls into mind what kind of God we choose to believe in. Do we believe in the God of good things? Or do we believe in a God who is there with us, carrying us, through the good times and the bad?