How great Love is that it creates for Itself not subjects to rule or a master to serve, but its own peers.  For just as surely as our children will one day become our equals, so we have been created with a limitless potential.

Most parents want their children to one day equal or exceed them.  Is God more selfish than this?  Could it really be God’s will to keep us down in the pews, singing How Great Thou Art for eternity?  It would be boring to be worshipped by slaves, even for the most dedicated megalomaniac.  If God was that way, that would make humans, most of whom desire a better world for their children, more selfless than God.

How could God create anything less than Itself?  If God did, then God would not be Godlike.  Love would be something selfish.  Love, by definition, is generosity.  It gives all to all.  What selfish satisfaction, what pompous need to be worshipped, would Love hope to satisfy in creating puppets less than itself to worship and to serve it?  If this was Love’s plan, Love wouldn’t be love.  God would be a puppetmaster. So what else could Love do but make more of Itself, knowing that Itself was the highest, the best, the purest that was? God is the artist whose works equal the master. The art rises to meet its maker.

Above all, you will to be your best.  Love too, which is more aware of what It is than you are of yourself, is aware of its own goodness.  Love wants to make that most supreme good happen. It wouldn’t be content to create something that wasn’t its best work, that was less than itself. Perfection yields perfection. It isn’t content with making anything lower or less than.

Your children are your equals.  They become like you.  And so, if we are truly God’s children, then we must also become like God.  Only pure Love could dare create its own equal, which is more of Itself, unfearful of a rival.  This is the risk Love always takes.  And it’s the risk we take when we love. It’s the risk Love asks us to take.

Love is both substance and the law by which that substance must abide.  And having to obey its own law – the law by which it creates and exists – Love is bound to create the highest and best, which must be more of Itself. Pursuant to the law of Love, Love must generously create its own equal.  This is what the spirit and principle of generosity means.

Therefore, God can only create God.  There can be no devil, no evil, no hell, no heaven and earth.  There can be no creation, for there is no distinction between creator and created.  The Creator creates the Creator, which creates the Creator.  Love is infinite expansion.  It is expansion of the Infinite into the Infinite.  Just as Michelangelo was compelled to pour out his paint on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, God must create.  God is driven by the need to celebrate and sing the acknowledgement that It is the highest and best there is.  By creating more of Itself, Love fulfills its need to acknowledge Its own greatness.  Abiding by Its only principle, Love must make more of Itself, and must love what It creates. And what it made was You.

Since we can do nothing but abide by Love’s law, we, too, must love what we make, and love ourselves in and for the act of creating.  We have no choice.  We are the painter and the painted.  Love is the single mission for which we were fashioned.  We seem stuck in a state of comparative choice where there seem to be opposites from which to choose, but ultimately, we all find that there is only one choice, and that is to love.  And choosing that, we forsake all previous choices made.  That much is determined.  Our singular mission is to expand within ourselves, into every void, each corner, which has forgotten the recollection of who and what we really are.

Yesterday, I felt alone and afraid.  “Where is the Love of God?” I asked.  I peered out into the world and waited for answer.  But no one, no thing came to be with me.  Last night, I lay awake, cold, surrounded by darkness.  “Everything’s going to be alright,” I whispered to myself.  Then the answer to my question came: The Love of God isn’t out in the world.  It’s within me.  The only things about ourselves that scare us are the parts we’re afraid to love.  And the only things in the world that frighten us are the aspects we refuse to love.  Human beings never err in imparting the gift of Love.  They only err when they do not seem to give It.

© 2022 by Michael C. Just

Mike’s novel, The Dirt: The Journey of a Mystic Cowboy, is available in softcover or eBook formats through Amazon.

You can purchase the book through this website. Or go straight to amazon at https://www.amazon.com/s?k=the+dirt+journey+of+a+mystic+cowboy&crid=1S40Q4BXSUWJ6&sprefix=the+dirt%3A+journey+of+a+m%2Caps%2C180&ref=nb_sb_ss_i_1_23

Mike’s other titles, including The Crippy, The Mind Altar, and Canyon Calls, are available through this website or through Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B002

Four of his short stories have recently been published online:

Lies, Ltd. has been published by The Mystery Tribune @ Lies, Ltd.: Literary Short Fiction by Michael C. Just (mysterytribune.com)

The Obligate Carnivore has been published by the Scarlet Leaf Review @ Category: MICHAEL JUST – SCARLET LEAF REVIEW

I See You, Too has been published by the 96th of October @ I See You, Too – 96th of October

Offload, a short story about a man who can heal any disease, is now live and can be read at The Worlds Within at Offload – The Worlds Within