“Short words are best,” asserted Winston Churchill, “and the old words when short are best of all.”
So, may I suggest three — very short and very old, which, when lined up and strung together are the best three that could possibly be:
God is love.
These words are chiseled into the rock, woven into the fabric, of the universe. More than that, if anything could be more, they are living and implanted by the Author of life into its every cell, resonating in every breath and heartbeat.
How could we not feel the life of those three short words pulsing all around us? Perhaps in part because they are so much around us that we live in them and swim in them like fish enlivened by but largely oblivious to the very thing that gives them life.
God is love.
Note that in this short, old, and every morning new, equational sentence, the verb, the multiplier, and the fulcrum is IS, to BE.
Yes, eternally.
The “great I AM” will always be and will always be exactly what he always is, love.
Those three words mean that as long as our Father wills the universe to be, the stars to twinkle, the worlds to spin … Those three words mean that if packed in every grain of sand on every sea-washed beach were a million years and all of those mini-mega-grains were stretched across creation at attention in single sand-soldier file … Those three words mean that the dance of the cosmos, the symphony of space, and the music of the spheres, will still play on because God is GOD, and God always IS, and God will always be LOVE.
The order of the short word-cars on this magnificent train matters immensely. “God is love” is a breathtaking stream flowing with the life of the Creator and wash-singing, joy-splashing, over every rock and crevasse of the universe.
“Love is god” is an idolatrous sludge defiling its worshipers and leaving a black trail of death, desolation, and the tears of despairing children in its sad and slimy wake. The first sings with the life of the Creator; the latter stagnates and festers in the stench of death-ridden darkness.
And, yes, in a fallen, sin-sick, and sadly twisted world, darkness is real and too often seems utterly pervasive. If we’ve lived very long, how could we not feel deep sympathy for anyone going through a time when darkness seems to have put out the sun?
But no eclipse is forever. The sun’s corona glows around the blackness, impatient to blaze again unfettered, and we have the promise of Eden’s Creator that one day unending joy will again be the watchword of the universe.
The first Adam fell, and we see the wreckage and the pain, but Adam’s word is not the last — because of the three short words that find their fruition, culmination, and crowning glory in the one Word who “became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth.”
Does it sometimes, even often, seem unbearably dark? Yes, but one Word “shines in the darkness” and will banish it forever, all because of the three short words:
God is love.
Curtis Shelburne writes about faith for The Eastern New Mexico News. Contact him at: