God Loves You, yeah, yeah, yeah!

       When he was very little, my son decided he was going to run away from home.  He wasn't getting his way and didn't feel loved because of that so he was leaving.  He asked me to make him a peanut butter sandwich and he took it and his musical teddy bear, wrapped them in his blanket, and said goodbye.  I followed him as he walked out the door and sat down on the front porch feeling about as bad as he did.
       I watched as he set out down the sidewalk.  He got past the house next door and then stood still at the road down to the student housing.  He stood there for several minutes looking sad.  Every once in a while, he would glance back to make sure I was still there.
       It began to drizzle so ran back in and picked up the umbrella and walked over to him.  "What's the matter?", I asked.  "How come you stopped?"
       "I can't cross the street without a grownup."
       "That's good you remembered.  It's raining, maybe you should come home now?"
       That made a good reason to come home while still sparing his pride.  He slipped his hand in mine and asked if I still loved him.  "Of course I still love you," I reassured him.  "I will always love you."  We went home and ate the peanut butter sandwich together.
       John Lennon once wrote "All you need is love".   There is truth in that for human beings.  Babies will not thrive without touch and caring contact.  People in loving relationships live longer as do people who reach out to volunteer and help others.  Some studies show that it boosts our immune system and lowers blood pressure and has other positive effects on our health.
       It is normal for people to need and want love.  You could say that we were created to love.   It's the answer to the question of why God allowed there to be sin in the world.  God gave us free will, the ability to choose and feel for ourselves.  Minus that ability, there would be no need for love; it wouldn't matter.  Yes, we make bad choices as well as good ones and we get hurt as well as hurt others, but we also are able to experience and express love and joy and be in relationship to others.  It is what makes familial love, friendship, martial partnership, and bonds with others possible.
       Why would that matter to God? Because God loves us and craves our love and relationship in return.
       Never thought of God needing our love?  The whole Old Testament is the continual story of God's people being in relationship, slowly turning away and forgetting God, God sending a prophet to call the people back to God, and the people then repent and return to God.   The story of the New Testament can be summed up in John 3:16, "For God so loved the world that God gave God's only son, so that everyone who believes in him may not die but have eternal life."  Jesus gives himself so that this imperfect people can be reunited with God forever.  Why?  Because God loves you just the way you are.
       So while some faiths or kinds of churches focus on decisions, rules, codes of behavior, and disciplines designed to help people make themselves holy, Jesus tells us that what God wants is our love; to be totally, happily, securely, and faithfully in love with God.  Movies, books, and preachers often give us a picture of truly faithful people as dour, sad-faced, very proper people often living stark spare lives that look more like prison than pleasure.

       Meanwhile, scripture tells us that what God wants is for us to be head-over heels in love!  Before telling the parable of the good Samaritan, a man asks Jesus what we must do to inherit eternal life.  The answer is that we are to love God completely and love each other as well.  As Jesus says over and over in the book of John, we will be known as his followers by the way in which we love others.  God invites us into relationship so that we can be filled with God's love.  To (mis)quote another Beatle's song, "God loves you, yeah! Yeah! Yeah!"  Read Luke 10:25-28