Preface: May the words I speak be only truth; let them express the love of God for all of us. There are three verses in the Bible that I fervently believe should be taken literally. The first is “love your neighbor as yourself.” The next is “God is love.” And perhaps my favorite, from the Gospel of John: “God is love, and whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him.” Note the common theme here: LOVE. Recently I explained to a friend why the message of God being LOVE is so important to me. My friend has dealt with a lot of unspeakable heartbreak in his life, and at his recent loss of his foster child, he messaged me with the cynical quip that “the man upstairs must have something out for me.” He was kind of shocked when I told him that the image of some bearded guy in a big nightgown is not a realistic image of the God I know. When I explained to him that God is LOVE, and love is all around us, he got quiet. Of course he asked “kind of like The Force in Star Wars