March 5

1 John 4:16—We have known and believed the love that God hath to us.

Life is one long education in various phases and aspects of love. First as a child, then as a friend, then as a lover, as wife or husband, as father or mother. We are perpetually being allowed to sit in some higher form for the progress of this Divine study. For to love is to live. To be loved is to drink of the sweetest cordial that can be prepared from the vintages of earth. And all is intended to help us to understand better the nature of God, who is love. As each new experience enters our life, we should consider a fresh facet or angle to break up and reveal to us the glory of God’s love. We should say to ourselves, Now I understand and know more accurately than before how God feels, and what his love is.

The apostle says we have known the love of God.—Indeed, it is so. Through years of life, each of which has been filled with the most various experiences, but filled also to the brim with proofs of God’s tender loving-kindness, we have had innumerable proofs of his love, for

"E’en the cloud that spreads above, and veileth Love,

Itself is Love."

The apostle says we must believe God’s love,—Standing on the sure foundation of what we have proved God to be in the past, we may look on the present and future with perfect faith. We have known Him too well to doubt Him now. We have known, and now we believe. He has made no mistakes. He is making none. He has done the best; and is doing it. We do not understand his dealings, but we know Him who is behind the mystery of providence, and can hear Him saying

"It is all right, only trust Me. Fear not! it is I."