Deuteronomy 6:4-7
Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD; and you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. And these words which I command you this day shall be upon your heart; and you shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.
The Lord is one. This is the great creedal revelation given to Israel that is so unlike anything else in the ancient world of polytheism. There is no God but the Lord. But equally astonishing is the revelation that Israel is to love God. We’ve heard it so often we forget its revolutionary character. Other nations give no sign that their gods were interested in love. Awe, fear, terror, cringing, slavish adulation of raw power? Yes. Detailed offers of worship in exchange for worldly success? Yes. But Love? No. God reveals himself to Israel as a vastly different sort of God than all their neighbors’ deities. He seeks, above all, love, not terror. And he seeks for that love to fill us to the depths of our being. We are not merely to go through the motions of worship, we are to love him with heart, soul, and might. And we are not merely to live that love in the confines of our head, we must see to it that it bubbles over into our homes, our marriages, our children. God is not an Assyrian deity, sucking the life out of his subjects with threats of capricious terror. He is a Lover, pouring out his bounty on us and through us to fill our lives with love. Take a minute and thank God that he is Love and live today as one created in His image.
