This isn't just any god but the one true God. God was and is all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-present- everywhere at every moment. God is, was, and will always be. If you contemplate the awesome nature of this God too long, it might make your brain hurt. The awesome thing about God is that God is 100% pure love. In its purest form, this love is the most powerful force in the universe.
God first expressed love was in CREATION.
We have learned that love isn't love unless it is expressed. Love requires a sender and a receiver. God's love has to be expressed and the way God first expressed love was in Creation. Some scientists now believe the whole universe began as a piece of matter smaller than a pea, expanded from there, and is still expanding. The Bible says that it started with three words: "Let there be..." God's vast love was expressed in the creation of the universe - heaven, sun, moon and even this green and brown marble we call Earth.
Humankind was made in the image of God.
God first expressed love was in CREATION.
Of all the plants and animals, humankind was made in the image of God, and God's desire was that people spend their lives in love and trust with God, who would be a tender-loving, doting parent to each and every one. That's it.
One of the clearest marks of God on humankind was free will. Free will is the power to make decisions or choices on our own. The truth is that love has to be a choice. God only ever wanted love from us and for us, and love cannot be forced. Love has to be given. Love has to be sent back to the sender, creating the bond of a relationship.
As the story goes, the first people used their free will to make a terrible decision. They decided to believe in God but not to enter into a relationship of love and trust with God. "Is that OK with you God?" God said, "It's tragic. It breaks my heart, and it will break yours. Apart from Me you will lose your way and dead end. However, you are free." The upshot of their decision was that human beings totally lost their way as a people with insane.
Humankind completely lost their way.
The human heart, mind and soul is made to function properly only in a relationship of love and trust with God. This relationship is what makes for a whole person - sanity. To forego that is to choose to live in a way we were not created to live, havin gIonly a piece of what life is meant to be. This life isn't whole, which is also to mean that it's insane. The whole world became saturated with insanity. It broke God's heart and theirs. They completely lost their way.
God NEVER gave up!
Get this! God's love is relentless. God never gave up on humankind. From the first instant when the first person chose to turn away from their relationship with God, God continued to love them and tried to win their love in return.
Things got bad. People got so far away from God's plan of paradise for them that God decided the best thing to do was go in a completely different direction. The slate was wiped clean. It was a do-over of sorts for the human race. God decided to use a specific group of people in this restart. It's a divine mystery why these people were chosen. However, the purpose was for this group to use their free will to build relationships with God. Their mission would be to teach their children and the whole world to do that so that all people would find their way.
This group, they lost their way, too. They didn't choose love but a lever. Their free will was used to build a fine and might religion they believed would move heaven and earth. God had given them ten wonderful boundaries for living the good life. But, they turned them into rules and regulations to try to control both people and God.
God's ten great ideas were morphed into 612 laws over the centuries. After all, could this God really be trusted? The thinking was that if you simply followed the rules, you would be just fine.
The next part of the story is by far the most exciting so far. God came to earth not as some invisible force or in a spaceship, but as a baby in a manger. God grew up here, walked the earth, and spoke and taught the way to real life. Jesus was the name God answered to.
For three years, He went about teaching a band of followers, and anyone who would listen, who God was, what God was up to, and how to get on board with that. He dusted off and freshened up what had been said from the beginning that all God wants for and from every one of us is love.
He said it this way, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself." He taught them to call God Abba, which means "Daddy." Jesus challenged His followers to each have his/her own one-in-a-zillion relationship of love and trust with God.
At the end of those three years, He gave His life to prove that He was who He said He was - God in flesh and blood. He gave His life to prove that what He taught and the life he called people to follow Him into could be trusted.
He died to show that love is the most powerful force in the universe. After being dead for about 39 hours, He came back to life as the exclamation point to all He had done and taught as the proof that love is indeed the most powerful force in the universe.
For about fifty days, He appears to those who had been following Him to reinforce that God's work on earth was not finished, and it would continue through them. They had a responsibility bestowed on them to share this life with everyone and invite each person whose paths they crossed into this life. It became the call of each follower to reach out to those who were lost and trying to make it in life without God, until everybody found their way home to Him.
Jesus taught His followers to share that if they fully stay in that relationship, life will come to them richer and fuller than they could ever have imaged it. That life, which is their life by God, will never end, so each one who pursues Jesus will also never end. The choice about that is each person's own choice.
From the day Jesus left this earth, the Holy Spirit (the same will and personality Jesus showed) came and stayed with us, those who follow Jesus into life. We found their way, and we will continue until He comes again.
The story does not go on just as it is now. The promise of Jesus is that in the fullness of time (whatever that means), He will return to this earth again. This time, it will not be in a manger, but large and in charge. The Kingdom of God, where nothing exists but love, joy and peace, where there is not one who doesn't have a relationship of love and trust with God, will be the light that shines in every heart.