To Love Is to Give and Forget
As a Peace-Loving Global Citizen
Pages 212-213, 218 & 229-230
The family is the only institution created by God. It is the school of love where people can learn how to love each other and live together in peace, and it is the training center where we practice how to build a palace of peace in the world. It is where we learn how to become a husband or wife who will live for the sake of our spouse and how to become a husband and wife who will travel on the eternal path of love. The family is the base camp for world peace, and it must be such that the children will say, “We have never seen our mother and father fight.”
We come up against all sorts of things in life. Even the most loving couple can have times when they may bicker with each other, become angry, and raise their voices. When the children come into the room, however, it all must stop immediately. No matter how angry a spouse may be, he must relate to his spouse in peace when the children are present. The children must grow up thinking their family is filled with joy and their parents always love each other.
Parents are like a second God to their children. If you ask your young children, “Whom do you like better—God or Mommy and Daddy?”—and they say they like their mom and dad better, then that means they also like God. The most precious education takes place in the family. You won’t find happiness and peace in some other place. The family is intended to be the Kingdom of Heaven. It would not matter if a person possesses incredible wealth and fame or even possesses the whole world. If all is not right with that person’s family, then he cannot be happy. The Kingdom of Heaven begins in the family. If a husband and wife are bound together in true love and they build an ideal family, this will connect directly with the world.
The essence of love is to cast aside any thought of having others live for one’s self; it is to live for the sake of others and give for the whole. Love gives, but then forgets even the fact that it has given and continues to give without ceasing. This is a love that gives in joy. It is the heart that a mother feels when she takes her infant in her arms and lets it feed from her breast.
Parents will suffer for their children until it seems their bones are going to melt away, yet they never feel that the work is difficult. That is how much they love their children. True love begins with God and comes to us from God. So when the parents say to their married children, “When you like each other, it is because of the grace of your parents,” the children must be able to respond, “If you had not found such a spouse for me, I don’t know what I would have done.”
The family is a bundle of love. When we go to the Kingdom of Heaven and unpack that bundle, a wonderful father and mother will jump out. Beautiful children will jump out. A benevolent grandfather and grandmother will jump out. This is the bundle of love. The family is the space in which God’s ideal is realized and the place where we can see the completion of God’s work. God’s will is to bring about a world in which love is made real, and the family is the place where God’s love overflows.
We only need to hear the word family for us to begin smiling. This is because the family is overflowing with true love that truly lives for the sake of all members. True love gives love, and then forgets even the fact that it gave, and then gives again. The love that has parents living for their children and grandparents for the grandchildren is true love. The love that lets a person give up his or her life for the country is true love.
There is a saying, “Anything can be accomplished when there is harmony in the home.” When there is peace in the family, everything goes well. The peaceful family is the building block of the Kingdom of Heaven. The family operates on the power of love. If we love the universe as we love our families, then there is nothing to stop us from going anywhere we want. God exists in the center of love, as the Parent of the entire universe. That is why the love in the family needs to link directly to God. When the family is completed in love, the universe will be completed.
The family is the school where love for humanity is taught and learned. When children who are raised in the warm love of their parents go out into the world, they will care for people in difficulty in the manner they learned in their home. People raised in loving relationships with their own brothers and sisters will go into society and share their caring hearts with their neighbors. People raised in love will look upon each person they meet in the world as a member of their own family. The starting point toward a true family is the heart of love that treats strangers as family and shares with them.
Another reason the family is important is that it expands to become the world. A true family is the basis for forming a true society, true nation, and true world. It is the starting point toward a world of peace that is God’s Kingdom. Parents will work for their children until their bones melt way. They are not working just to feed their own children, however. A person whose heart overflows with love is capable of working for the sake of others and God.
The family is where we receive so much love that it overflows from our hearts. The family protects its members in its embrace, but its function is not to prevent love from getting out. In fact, the love in the family should overflow into the surrounding community. No matter how much love may overflow, the love in the family will never go dry. This is because it is received from God. The love we receive from God is such that we can continue to dig it out but never see the bottom. In fact, the more we dig, the more love wells up like pure spring water. Anyone who has been raised in this love can lead a true life.