love.

love is unity.

i was thinking about love the other day, and i suddenly realized that this is what i think love is essentially, at it's core.

the love between friends is the deepest when your knowledge of one another is so deep that you know the other's thoughts, feelings, dreams, passions, and when you become unified in purpose somehow with them, putting their needs before your own. not that we become the same as our friends, but that we become unified with them in a deeper way of mutually understanding and serving.

the love between a husband and wife is partially expressed in unity of body, but also in unity of life. love in marriage is life together, is becoming for one another and one another's needs in a way that brings you deeper together. (at least, i could imagine. :-)

and the love of God. God's love is a beautiful expression of unity. His love led him to become unified with us, to become a human being, to experience oneness of humanity with us, his beloved, in Christ. and because of Christ, we are extended the opportunity to embrace unity with God, to participate in God's life through Christ and the Holy Spirit. to live through and by and for God. and what more profound expression of love and unity than the Trinity, God three in one?

we read in 1 John that God is love. He is our perfect example of unity, both in His being, unified three in one, and in His acting to unite us to Himself in love.

i desire to love more deeply, to listen more fully, to serve more selflessly, and to allow God to work through me more wholly.