What would you say if asked to describe God's love without using any family terms?

[Tis_Bearself]

Along the same lines, there’s this prayer:

A PRAYER
TO JESUS, MY FRIEND
(By St. Claude de la Colombiere, S.J.)

Jesus! You are my true Friend, my only Friend.
You take a part in all my misfortunes;
You take them on Yourself;
You know how to change them into blessings;
You listen to me with the greatest kindness when I relate my troubles to You,
and You have always balm to pour on my wounds.
I find You at all times;
I find You everywhere,
You never go away:
if I have to change my dwelling,
I find You there wherever I go.
You are never weary of listening to me,
You are never tired of doing me good.
I am certain of being beloved by You,
if I love You; my goods are nothing to You,
and by bestowing Yours on me, You never grow poor;
however miserable I may be,
no one nobler or cleverer or even holier can come between You and me,
and deprive me of Your friendship;
and death, which tears us away from all other friends,
will unite me forever to You.
All the humiliations attached to old age,
or to the loss of honor,
will never detach You from me;
on the contrary, I shall never enjoy You more fully,
and You will never be closer to me
than when everything seems to conspire against me
to overwhelm me and to cast me down.
You bear with all my faults with extreme patience,
and even my want of fidelity and my ingratitude
do not wound You to such a degree
as to make You unwilling to receive me when I return to You.
O Jesus, grant that I may die praising You,
that I may die loving You,
that I may die for the love of you.

Amen.

 

[goout]

midori:

Still the ocean.

It’s immersive, like a physical, tangible thing that surrounds you.

I would say for my family…“love” was more of a suffocating thing, something you would want to get away from but couldn’t. I’m not sure it wasn’t present, in its own way, it was just mixed with so many other messages. The overwhelming one was that “love” means you have to get hurt. It was something that surrounded you even when you wanted to get away and be yourself and feel emotions and just be a person. The reason you couldn’t do that was because you were too “loved” to be allowed to do so.

Sorry to hear that. I have a similar experience of suffocation. Another day…
Oddly enough, what you describe above is the best answer to free will issue so often proposed by the problem of suffering.
“why would a loving God allow someone to suffer?”
The answer to that kind of “love” is above.

 

[misstherese]

An engulfing Divine fire, strong and peaceful.

 

[casslean]

(Sorry, I’m not really good at explaining exactly what I’m looking for tonight. I’m just thinking more…there are plenty of people out there for whom saying God loves us like a parent loves their child, is not a comforting analogy. And I’m not sure what words one would use.)

Having had a rather troubled childhood, I didn’t necessarily find a huge amount of comfort in the parent-child analogy. However, I love animals, and grew up with a strong sense of responsibility for animals in my care, so God as a shepherd was a far more comforting analogy.