To understand God’s love is the center of our faith. By understanding Gods’s love we can understand that everything happens in our life for good reasons. God doesn’t like sin but He loves sinners.

If a child (or for that matter, an adult) is troubled and misbehaves frequently, he may not understand his parents love and all they try to do to help him get on the right track in his life.  To the child, everything his parents do is against his will and the distance between him and his parents grows further and further. He feels anger, misery, frustration, looking for something else to fill his unsatisfied empty hole. There is love given to him and he doesn’t see it.  The situation may continue until he realizes and is willing to accept his parents love and teaching. This kind of relationship happens between us and God too, if we don’t know His love and the grace he gives is to bring us back to Him, we live with an emptiness in our soul. All the difficulty we see is just like the difficulty that the misbehaving child sees from his parents. The difficulties we experience have the purpose of building our character and strengthening our soul.

51. O SON OF MAN!
My calamity is My providence, outwardly it is fire and vengeance, but inwardly it is light and mercy. Hasten thereunto that thou mayest become an eternal light and an immortal spirit. This is My command unto thee, do thou observe it. (Baha’u’llah, The Arabic Hidden Words)

God created us to know and love Him and to enjoy His creation in both this world and eternal life in spiritual world. He prepares for us a great bounty, but we won’t be able to enjoy it until we walk towards Him and accept His offer. And this is why it is so important to understand God’s grace and be grateful for His offer and His love.

God is love and grace can rescue a soul. This story shows an example. One day a Buddhist master goes into the kitchen to get something. He sees a thief grab a bag. It’s dark in the kitchen, and the thief start making a mouse sound to try to get away. The master starts talking to him. While they talk, other monks come in because of the noise they make. The monks are ready to grab the thief and the master say “let him go”. At the same time the master gives the thief the bag which is full of rice he tried to grab and tells him if he needs something let him know. Later, other monks ask the master why he let him go with the rice. The master replies “who would take the risk to steal if they are not in need?” At the end of story the thief sacrifices himself in a war for others and he said because of the master’s grace he became a better person. I am sure you heard similar stories before. Most of us will act like the monks and make the person suffer the consequences for what they did. The difference between the master and monks in the story is one is lives under God’s Grace and the others do not.

Thinking again about the parent-child relationship, consider how hurt the parents would feel when a child remains distant from them and keeps doing opposite of what they wish for the child. Then  imagine how  God might feel when we act like that child. In reality, God is infinitely greater and is not limited by our human feelings, but it may be helpful for us to understand God from the relationship we have with our parents or our children. When we have problems with these relationships we usually know deep down how to solve them, but are afraid to do it for fear of being hurt more. What we need to do for our relationship with God is to let go of all fear and return to Him, and accept His love.