Human love is faulty. It is not eternal. God's love is perfect and eternal.

Love is the strongest of all motives. The father suffers untold hardships in order to provide for his family. The mother gives all for her children. The gymnast drives herself to excellence to please her coach and the audience. Apart from the approval of other human beings she would not be motivated to do her best.

The composer sets himself the difficult task of orchestrating a symphony. The artist is willing to undergo the agony of perfecting a masterpiece. All are inspired by love. Take away the love of their heart and they drift about aimlessly without motivation.

Apart from love the human being cannot learn or function adequately. It is possible for babies to die for no reason other than lack of demonstrations of love.

It is so foolish to think of Heaven as the getting of things! It is love that is the greatest treasure of all. Our treasures in Heaven are relationships.

How many people go through life grasping for things, or money, or fame, and then come to their last hour in profound grief and torment of conscience because they have betrayed their loved ones? The adulterer follows the lusts of his body only to find he has traded away what alone could have brought joy to his heart—the love and respect of his wife and children. How blind we are!

All human beings are frail in the area of relationships. Such apparently is not the case with the angels.

God has given to mankind all that is necessary to be in God's image, to be fruitful, and to have dominion over all the works of God's hands.

But God has made us male and female, He made each of us incomplete. No human being can be in God's image, be fruitful, or have dominion, apart from another human being.

In the ages to come the image, fruitfulness, and dominion given to mankind will be elevated and broadened to a degree not understandable to us in the present hour. Relationships, including the oneness foreshadowed in human marriage, also will be elevated and broadened to a degree not known to us at this time. We shall be one as the Father and the Son are One.

Self-centeredness, which is the desire of the human being to view all things in terms of himself, is the opposite of love. Love creates and blesses. Self-centeredness destroys and curses. There is no place for self-centeredness in God's Presence.

Self-centeredness is of Hell and creates Hell wherever it goes. No self-centered human being will ever attain love, joy, or peace. Release from the blight of self-centeredness is possible only as—after we have suffered for a season—the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit come into complete union with our personality.

To be continued.