Tell me how many beads there are
In a silver chain of evening rain,
Unravelled from the tumbling main,
And threading the eye of a yellow star –
So many times do I love again.
~Thomas Lovell Beddoes, 19th century English poet

Humans are indeed capable of loving over and over again, and the people we love become like “beads” on the “silver chain” of our life experiences.  Creation is like that too.  Piece by different piece God linked the elements of Creation together to fulfill His grand design, and each unique piece in the mosaic of Creation is the result of His amazing creativity, goodness, and love.  I believe part of His plan for humanity is that the people who cross our paths are there to present new opportunities for us to love, not necessarily ones easy to love, but opportunities nevertheless.  And when we tap into our inherent goodness, take a chance on love, and invest ourselves to that end, our lives are colored in amazing hues and altered for the better.  Adam and Eve may have fallen short of God’s ideal plan, but it was not until AFTER they had been created and implanted with God’s indestructible goodness, His ability to love, and His willingness to redeem the fallen with grace.

Goodness and love can be suppressed, beaten down, and/or buried, but like the light that the apostle John said is never overcome by darkness, they are not overcome and therefore always to be found somewhere in the human heart.    Should there be any doubt about the innate goodness in a human’s heart, consider these things:  Man was created in the image of a good and loving God who has attempted, repeatedly and most magnanimously with His Son, to show us the goodness and ability to love within us, and He has some very definitive words to say about the goodness of all that He made.  Happy Valentine’s Day!

Day 1:  God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.  God saw that it was good. . .  -Genesis 1:3-4

Day 2:  God called the dry ground “land,” and the gathered waters he called “seas.”  And God saw that it was good.  -Genesis 1:10

Day 3:  The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kind.  And God saw that it was good.  -Genesis 1:12

Day 4:  God set them in the expanse of the sky to give light to the earth, to govern the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness.  And God saw that it was good.  -Genesis 1:17-18

Day 5:  So God created the great creatures of the sea and every living  and moving thing with which the water teems, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind.  And God saw that it was good.  -Genesis 1:21

Day 6:  God saw all that he had made(livestock, wild animals, all creatures that move along the ground, man in His own image, fish of the sea, birds of the air), and it was very good.  -Genesis 1:31

Day 7:   By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work.  And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done.  -Genesis 2:2-3