I take literally the statement in the Gospel of John that God loves the world. I believe that the world was created and approved by love, that it subsists, coheres, and endures by love, and that, insofar as it is redeemable, it can be redeemed only by love. I believe that divine love, incarnate and indwelling in the world, summons the world always toward wholeness, which ultimately is reconciliation and atonement with God.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes that love is the fundamental force behind creation and redemption in the world.
In this quote, Wendell Berry articulates a profound belief that love is the essence of existence and divine purpose. He reflects on the idea that the world is not only created through love but also sustained by it, suggesting that any potential for redemption lies in the same power. Love serves as a guiding force that leads toward reconciliation with God, highlighting its central role in achieving wholeness and harmony in both the individual and the greater cosmos.
In practice
During a speech on compassion, this quote can be used to highlight the importance of love in addressing societal issues.
We weren't allowing our hopes to become expectations. Expectations are tempting, pleasant, maybe necessary. They are scary too, once you have had some experience. They are not necessarily and not always a bucket of smoke, but they can be and are even likely to be.
The uplands of my home country in north central Kentucky are sloping and easily eroded, dependent for safekeeping upon year-round cover of perennial plants.
A corporation, essentially, is a pile of money to which a number of persons have sold their moral allegiance.
WE ARE DESTROYING OUR COUNTRY - I mean our country itself, our land. This is a terrible thing to know, but it is not a reason for despair unless we decide to continue the destruction. If we decide to continue the destruction, that will not be because we have no other choice. This destruction is not necessary. It is not inevitable, except that by our submissiveness we make it so.
Much of our waste problem is to be accounted for by the intentional flimsiness and unrepairability of the labor-savers and gadgets that we have become addicted to.
We had entered an era of limitlessness, or the illusion thereof, and this in itself is a sort of wonder. My grandfather lived a life of limits, both suffered and strictly observed, in a world of limits. I learned much of that world from him and others, and then I changed; I entered the world of labor-saving machines and of limitless cheap fossil fuel. It would take me years of reading, thought, and experience to learn again that in this world limits are not only inescapable but indispensable.
I think people are born bisexual, and it's just that our parents and society kind of veer us off into this feeling of 'Oh, I can't'. They say it's taboo. It's ingrained in our heads that it's bad, when it's not bad at all. It's a very beautiful thing.
A day will come when everything in my life will be changed, when I shall do good to others, when some one will love me, when I shall give my whole heart to the man whi gives ne his; neanwhile, U will suffer in silence and keep my love as a reward for him who shall set me free.
...for a girl with eyes like hers has a will and is not ruled by anyone but a lover.
He (God) loved us not because we are lovable, but because He is love.
Oh, what a catastrophe, what a maiming of love when it was made personal, merely personal feeling. This is what is the matter with us: we are bleeding at the roots because we are cut off from the earth and sun and stars. Love has become a grinning mockery because, poor blossom, we plucked it from its stem on the Tree of Life and expected it to keep on blooming in our civilized vase on the table.
God is love, and that love works through men-especially through the whole community of Christians.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.