Weekly Message  7/9/2010

The Meaning and Purpose of Life – Part 2

We are created from God’s own essence.  He divided Himself to make us.  Why?  Well the answer is pretty simple: So he would have someone to love.  There isn’t any better example than that of having children of our own.  Just as children enrich our lives and bring us joy and happiness, we enrich God and bring him joy.

When we consciously share our lives with family and friends and we include God in that, we are enriching our lives to the fullest.  Life with God’s love is joyous.  Love is the energy that runs through all sacred texts.  Love is the goal of every soul, whether realized or not.  That love needs to include God.  We should love God within ourselves.  We should love God in others.  We should love God in all we do: our work, our service, our family, our children, our church.

We cannot have joyous living without love.  I have always thought of the Holy Spirit as love, an energy by which all things are created.  This energy of love flows from God to us. We charge it by our thoughts, feelings, spoken words and actions.  Our charge can be positive or negative.  This is the ‘Secret.’  To succeed in life we need to be careful of our thoughts, feelings and actions: to always keep them positive.  The flow of this energy through us is what gives us life, joyous life.  Love is the ultimate flow of God’s divine energy.

I picture this energy as a golden white light flowing into me from above, lighting every nuke and cranny of my being.  I see radiant rays of light beaming from me touching all with the light of love, loving everything that is here in my world or comes into my world.  I feel the warmth.  I feel the joy.  I can’t help but smile and feel joyous.  In this way, everyday, I improved the joy and love in my life.

“The continual outpouring of a feeling of Peace and Divine Love to every person and everything unconditionally, no matter whether you think it be deserved or not, is the Magic Key that unlocks the door and releases instantly this tremendous ‘Inner God-Power.’  Fortunate indeed is he who has learned this ‘Law’ for he then seeks to BE all peace and Love.  Without it humanity has nothing good, and with it they have all things ‘Perfect’.  Harmony is the Keynote, the “one Great Law of Life.’  Upon it rests all Perfect Manifestation and without it all form disintegrates and returns into the “Great Sea of Universal Light,” Unveiled Mysteries – Godfrey Ray King

We are much more loved than we realize.  We have the love of our family and friends.  We also have God’s love.  We have the angels’ love.  We have the love of loved ones who have passed on.  We have the love of our spiritual masters Jesus, Buddha, Confucius, and others.  We have the love of our spiritual leaders and other ministers in the Church of Interfaith Christians.

Love is the ultimate fulfillment and purpose of life.  Love is the source of the greatest joy, bliss and ecstasy.  Believing in the ‘power of love’ and using the ‘power of love’ raises us all.  It raises the entire planet.  Love is the opposite of fear.  Fear is what causes negative emotions and feelings.  Love rids us of fear.  It is impossible to truly be free unless we can forgive, accept and love each other.  Love is crucial in our evolvement as spiritual beings.  Love is the most joyful, positive, meaningful, and fulfilling action in life.

Beauty is a product of love.  The beauty God has created on earth, and the beauty artists and musicians create is fueled by the fire and passion of love.  God’s loving Spirit through our thoughts, feelings and actions manifests beauty for the enjoyment and fulfillment of our lives.

Remember the three fundamental principles for a ‘good life’ with God.  Life cannot exist without God. Life is ultimately about love.  That’s what we are talking about here today.  It’s about God’s love for us and vice-versa and our love for each other (all God’s children) and our love for all that exists in our lives and on our planet.  To be a part of such love and the goodness of God, we have to take on the responsibility of creating our lives (which will be the subject of next week’s message.)

Christianity affirms the Power of Love:

Matthew 22: 37-40: “Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.  This is the first and great commandment.  And the second is like unto it.  Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.  On these two commandments hang all the law and prophets.”

I Corinthians 13: 1-10, 13:

“…1 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3 If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing. 4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. 8 Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears.. 13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.”

Islam affirms the Power of Love:

Qur’an 2:165: “Yet there are some men who take for themselves objects of worship besides Allah, whom they love as they should love Allah.  And those who believe are stronger in (their) love for Allah.”

Qur’an 5:93: “On those who believe and do good there is no blame…when they keep their duty and believe and do good deeds, then keep their duty and do good (to others). And Allah loves the doer of good.”

Qur’an 3:159: “Allah loves those who trust (in Him).

Judaism affirms the Power of Love:

(Tanakh) Leviticus 19:17-18: “You shall not hate your kinsfolk in your heart.  Reprove your kinsman but incur no guilt because of him.  You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against your countrymen.  Love your fellow as yourself: I am the Lord.”

 (Tanakh) Deuteronomy 6:5-7: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.  Take to heart these instructions with which I charge yu this day.  Impress them upon your children.  Recite them when you stay at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you get up.”

(Tanakh) Proverbs 8:17, 21: “Those who love me I love, and those who will seek me will find me. … I endow those who love me with substance; I will fill their treasures.”

Hinduism affirms the Power of Love:

The Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 12: “That one I love who is incapable of ill will, who is friendly and compassionate.”

The Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 6: “The infinite joy of touching the Godhead is easily attained by those who are free from the burden of evil and established within themselves.  They see the Self in every creature and all creation in the Self.  With consciousness unified through meditation, they see everything with an equal eye.

I am ever present unto those who have realized me in every creature.  Seeing all life as my manifestation, they are never separated from me.  They worship me in the hearts of all, and all their actions proceed from me.  Wherever they may live, they abide in me.

When a person responds to the joys and sorrows of others as if they were his own, he has attained the highest state of spiritual union.”

Buddhism affirms the Power of Love:

The Dhammapada: “Full of love for all things in the world, practicing virtue in order to benefit others, this man alone is happy.”

The Majjhima-Nikaya: “However men may speak concerning you, whether appropriately or inappropriately, whether courteously or rudely, whether wisely or foolishly, whether kindly or maliciously, thus, my disciples, must you train yourselves.  Our minds should remain unsullied; neither should evil word escape our lips.  Kind and compassionate will we ever remain, loving of heart, not harboring secret hate.  And we will bathe them with the unfailing stream of loving thought. And proceeding further, we will embrace and flood the whole wide world with constant thoughts of loving kindness, wide, ample, expanding, immeasurable as the world, free from enmity, free from ill will.  Thus disciples, must you train yourselves.”

Taoism affirms the Power of Love:

Tao Teh Ching, chapter 34: “The Supreme loves and nourishes all things.”

Tao Teh Ching, chapter 10:

“In keeping the spirit and the vital soul together,

Are you able to maintain their perfect harmony?...

In loving your people and governing your state,

Are you able to dispense with cleverness?”

Tao Teh Ching, chapter 13:

“If we have no body, what calamities can we have?

Hence only he who is willing to give his body for the sake of the world is fit to be entrusted with the world.

Only he who can do it with love is worthy of being the steward of the world.”

Confucianism affirms the Power of Love:

Confucian Analects, chapter 6: “Better than the one who knows what is right is he who loves what is right.”

Confucian Analects, chapter 12: “Fan Ch’ih asked about benevolence.  The Master said, “It is to love all men.”Better than the one who knows what is right is he who loves what is right.”

The world’s Holy Scriptures show how wonderful and essential it is to love God and to love others and ourselves as God loves us – fully and powerfully.  Love often comes in the form of good works.  In addition to thinking and feeling love, love is taking action in the service of others.

When we love God, our creator and divine parent, and when we have sufficient wisdom to use that power for good, we then attune to divine power.  Love is the Magic Key that unlocks the flow of the Holy Spirit.  The Holy Spirit is the energy and light of the universe.  Let us radiate love to all in our world.

 
Blessings, Rev. Dr. Sharra