The great thing about God’s love is that it’s not determined by the object.

God does not love us because we are good. God loves us because God is good.

It takes our whole lives for that to sink in, along with lots of trials and testing of divine love, because that’s not how human love operates.

Human love is largely determined by the attractiveness of the object.

When someone is nice, good, not high-maintenance, physically attractive, important, or has a nice personality, we find it much easier to give ourselves to them or to “like” them. That’s just the way we humans operate.

We naturally live in what I call the meritocracy of quid pro quo. We must be taught by God and grace how to live in an economy of grace. Divine love is a love that operates in a quite unqualified way, without making distinctions between persons and seemingly without such a thing as personal preference. Anyone who receives divine love feels like God’s favorite in that moment! We don’t even have the capacity to imagine such a notion until we have received it! Divine love is received by surrender instead of any performance principle whatsoever.

+Adapted from Following the Mystics through the Narrow Gate…

Seeing God in All Things (Recording).