HALF A DOZEN years ago I took part in what cyclists refer to as a "double century"—a one-day-200-mile bike ride. The course ran through a mostly rural region of central California where the traffic is sparse and the scenery breathtaking. A few hundred bikers participated, and even though I didn't know any of them, I quickly learned that the spirit pervading the day would be one of friendly comradery, not one of competition. Everyone arrived ready to enjoy the day, the cycling, the scenery, and one another.

Because of the length of the ride, we began at 4:00 a.m., rode through an hour or two of darkness, and emerged, refreshed and renewed, into light. From then on, the pattern of the day, at least for me, was to fall in with a cyclist or two, pedal and chat together for a time, and then, when one clearly wanted to travel more quickly and the other to take a slower pace, part company.

Almost always, I was the one opting for a slower pace. I'd anticipated this, and was happy just to be there, to get to participate at all. As the day unreeled from pre-dawn to post-dusk, I stored away as many friendly encounters as I did mental snapshots of picture-perfect landscapes. However, 13, 14, 15, 16 hours into the "double century," there were fewer and fewer cyclists to team up with, there was less and less spare energy for chatting if they did appear, and with the arrival of total darkness, there was no scenery to take in or draw inspiration from. Finally, I labored on alone through the night, the small pool of light from my headlamp preceding me by a few feet and growing dimmer as the batteries drained.

Fifteen or twenty miles from the finish line I came to the longest climb of the day, and slowed to a crawl. By this time I was way past exhausted and was having to dig deeper and deeper to find anything to fuel me forward.

Then what seemed like an angel-message of unconditional love rolled into my life. Coming the opposite direction was another cyclist. As he reached me, he swung around next to me and joined me in the long climb. I soon learned he'd finished the course hours before, but not finding a "double century" taxing enough, he'd decided to retrace part of the course in case a straggling cyclist was still coming in. He had ceaseless energy, and bubbled along in conversation, treating me as if he hadn't even noticed my exhaustion. Interestingly, that helped me overcome my fatigue. I began to revive. We rode together until, around 18 hours after the start of the ride, we crossed the finish line. Then, as I recall, he cycled out of my life, heading back onto the course to scoop up the one or two stragglers who were even slower than I.

I still view that man's arrival on the scene as a gift of unconditional love. With my spirits flagging, it couldn't have come at a more welcome time. In a way, though, that seems natural. After all, gifts of unconditional love are what the Almighty delivers into our lives regularly—in the moments we need them most. Love that is not earned, not bought, doesn't expect anything in return. Love that is expressed by people to other people, but which, I believe, originates with God, who is Love itself.

Maybe that's why there's so much love around. Look closely and you'll see it on bike paths and playing fields, in foxholes and African villages. You'll find such love in the hardest of post-tragedy times, when strangers embrace to comfort one another or even to help one another survive, say, a hurricane and its aftermath. But you'll also find it in the commonest of times: when a fisherman mends his nets and could use—and gets—a helping hand, or when a shopper strolls through the mall and briefly loses his or her way—only to be shepherded back on track by a good Samaritan. Unconditional love shows up in all those scenes and more, because Love, divine Love, was already there in the first place.

And because divine Love was already there, its unconditional expression naturally follows. A Bible passage says, "We love him [God], because he first loved us" (I John 4:19). Or, as it is sometimes phrased, We love, because He first loved us. First of all, God. Begin with Him and everything else falls into place. God is Love. That's who He is, and it is what He does. He loves, and more specifically, He loves you and me. Unconditionally. That's what empowers us to love Him, to love our planet, to love one another, to love ourselves. Again, unconditionally.

I used to think of God's unconditional love as meaning He loved me, flaws and all. You know, I still find that an encouraging statement. But when I want to get more precise in my reasoning, I recall that it's not really a case of Him loving us flaws and all. It's more a case of Him seeing us without flaws at all. That's right. He sees us and loves us as flawless, perfect in every detail, as His exact likeness. That's how He knows us and loves us.

So, I find myself moving toward a somewhat different definition of unconditional love. Yes, He loves us without restraint, without limit, without that love ever ebbing, no matter what. He sees us through such loving eyes that He sees no negative condition connected to us at all. For instance, maybe someone was told they were suffering from some health-condition, a cold perhaps. But God, in His unconditional love for that person, sees him or her as free of that condition. Would God see you or me or anyone as unemployed or angry or uncertain or flawed in any way? Not for a minute. His unconditional love for us means that He loves us and sees us as without any negative conditions. It means He knows us purely, accurately, spiritually. Mary Baker Eddy once wrote in her main work on Christian Science, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures: "Love never loses sight of loveliness. Its halo rests upon its object" (p. 248). You are the object of divine Love's deep contemplation. God crowns you—perfect you—with His halo. In His love for you, He never loses sight of your lovely, unconditional perfection.

And that, it seems to me, was a foundational fact to Christ Jesus' unmatched record of healing. Consider his healing of a man saddled with leprosy, a dreaded, pariah-making condition in those days. Despite his outcast status, the man approached the Master, seeking healing. Jesus, brimming over with love, saw the man without the condition of leprosy, knew that in spiritual fact the man had never been burdened with such an unjust imposition. Rather than viewing the man as encumbered with a terrible condition that somehow had to be disposed of, the effect of unconditional love was to reveal him as free, pure, unburdened. And as always that way. The healing was not a question of getting rid of a bad condition, but a question of disclosing to the man that he was condition-free. In response to the man's petition, the Bible says, "Jesus, moved with compassion [there's the unconditional love], put forth his hand, and touched him [there it is again], and saith unto him, I will; be thou clean" [and yet again] (Mark 1:41). Suddenly, the man's disease-free perfection was evident to everyone.

In that, is the example for us all. In the Master's life and healing ministry is the model of unconditional love for one's neighbor that we all want to bring out more fully. How to begin? First of all, God. Begin with divine Love. Love loves you unconditionally—sees you as never saddled with a bad condition. And that empowers you to have the same kind of love for Him. And for your neighbor. And for yourself. And for your planet. And for your fellow cyclist. And for.... |css