The Arms of Divine Love

by Djenye Ndebe

An American television character called The Hulk had giant, bulging green arms, along with an occasional goofy smile to show he was an okay guy. On the other hand, dancers often have long, slender limbs that are so graceful and elegant they almost seem more like spiritual entities that material things. Somewhere in between these rarer prototypes are the familiar arms of a caring parent holding her or his child in a loving embrace.

The nature of love is perhaps one of the most discussed topics in the world, but I would like to examine the more elusive of the ideas presented in our title, namely, the meaning of “divine.”

The definition that means the most to me is “the very holiest; supremely good; sacred.” These thoughts contrast strikingly with a more trivialized usage one might hear, such as “these cookies are just divine!” In that context, the word simply means good, or desirable. So, maybe we can say that this trivial usage at least points in the right direction, towards the goodness of the Eternal. But, how do we know there is such a thing as the Eternal, or that its nature is good?

Ultimately, this idea, it seems to me, has to be accepted through faith, although, as an indicator, human history does illustrate the gradual predominance of goodness over evil through a period of thousands of years of observable phenomena.

Human beings have choices to make about what to think and how to live. Individuals choose whether to think about evil things and engage in evil activities, or think about good things and engage in good activities. People entertaining evil thoughts have dark, unhappy lives. People entertaining thoughts of goodness have happy, peaceful, fulfilling lives, though not without hardships.

It seems to me that the ascendancy of goodness in human history shows that there is an eternal spiritual principle, a driving causative power, behind that ascendancy. And it also seems to me that since we have a choice as to how to invest our thoughts and actions, it’s the logical choice to invest them toward what history teaches us is true, and what our hearts tell us is true.

So, what is the love that is supremely good, and how do we feel its strong arms embracing us? From my own experience, my answer is that we have to be able to be quiet enough to allow our thoughts to travel toward eternal Love, the divine, infinite being who is the creator of all. We have to give our thoughts the opportunity of finding this spiritual love, this spiritual embrace. Many of us, in our reading of spiritual writings, have found certain passages that have touched our hearts (if this isn’t the case for you, you might enjoy reading the article on the Youth Spirituality page.) Why not ride the wings of these profound passages by quietly praying with them while being wrapped in the bosom of divine Love? Why not give this experience a try, and give ourselves an opening to being surprised and even overwhelmed by what we discover?

Is there a spiritual, a divine aspect to existence? How will we ever know if we do not give ourselves a chance to find out, if we do not give our thoughts free reign to soar, within the harmony of peaceful contemplation, into the embrace of the Eternal’s love?