Love

I wanted to write some about what God has been showing me in my quiet time. It began as I was studying participles in my grammer class. Dawn mentioned participles in her previous post. Participles are the passive voice in verbs. For example, "The food was eaten by my children." The verb "eaten" is the participle. Participles in English end in -en or -ed. The sentence structure is reverse of normal, hence the term "passive." Normally we would say "the children ate the food." In Spanish, participles are very important. They can function as nouns, verbs, and adjectives. I began thinking about how that applies to the word "love." In addition during our Bible study time with the kids we have been talking about love.

The word "love" can occur as a noun such as "Dawn's love is special." And that statement is true. We hear the word "love" used in this way often. More commonly the word "love" is a verb, such as "I love you." I have tried to tell Dawn this casi todos los días (almost everyday) since we have been married (another participle). The word love can function as an adjective such as "Dawn is a lovely person." The word lovely modifies the noun person and therefore is an adjective. We hear the word used in this way many times for people or for things such as "that was a lovely dessert." Finally, love can be an adverb such as "Dawn acts lovingly towards her family." The word "love" modifies the verb acts, therefore it is an adverb. These are all examples that we are familiar with. Some of these examples are obviously used more than others. But one use of the word I have never heard used in 51 yaers is for someone to say of another person "He/she is love." A very simple sentence but we never hear someone say it about someone else. We usually hear that someone is lovely or loving--both adjectives.

So, what is the point of all this grammer review? The phrase "God is love" does occur in the Bible and it has had a large impact on me. First John ch 4 vs 8 and 16say "...for God is love," and "...God is love..." I have always been taught that if the Bible says something 2 or 3 times we should pay particular attention to it. It struck me that the Bible does not only use "love" as an adjective such as God is loving, though He is, or God is lovely, though He is that also. With God, love is a noun: God is love; pure, simple, and complete. Más luego (more later on).