All that love is, God is, for God is love. As the negative side of love is unselfish - seeketh not her own - so her positive side is concern for others, a deep, ardent, all consuming concern: dauntless, self-sacrificing, invincible. “Love never faileth.” Such is the divine essence and this it is that is imparted to the creature.

There can be no self-complacency with God, neither could He provide a self-satisfied salvation. Divine joy is in the fullness of love, and love is all-embracing. To speak of a happy shepherd with an incomplete flock, or even of a happy flock with comrades missing, would be to malign both sheep and shepherd.

Heaven’s joys will be full only when sin’s sorrow cease. “Tis of mine” will be the yearning cry of the Good Shepherd spirit in the bosom of both saint and Saviour until the last of all the lost has been gathered home. Love cannot omit; His soul travail was for all. Neither can love abandon or forget. His purpose, as His promise, is “until He find it”. Thus it is that He is yet to “see of the travail of His soul and be satisfied.” And surely we too shall be satisfied when conformed to this likeness. Oh, the fullness of heaven’s joy when sin’s sorrows shall have ceased!

D. Buchanan