God’s Love

Is Not Learned. It Is Given.

There are moments in life that never leave you. They don’t fade. They don’t soften with time. They stay — alive, sharp, sacred.

Many years ago — somewhere between ten and twenty, I honestly don’t remember — I was visiting my hometown in Romania.

I was walking down the street with my mother when we passed a man begging. I usually don’t stop. Not because I don’t care, but because sometimes you don’t know what to say, how to help, or where to begin.

But this time, I stopped.

I gave him a little money and was about to leave when he started to talk. His words came out broken, overlapping, hard to fully understand — but the weight of them was unmistakable. People had died. Someone close to him was gone. He had lost his house. His life, whatever it once was, had collapsed.

I didn’t know if this had happened recently or if he had been living like this for years. I didn’t know the full story. But I knew one thing.

So I said the only truth I had.

“I don’t know why these things happened to you. I don’t know why life looks like this right now. But I know this for sure: God loves you. Even if everything around you seems to say the opposite — that does not testify against His love.”

And then he looked at me and said something that pierced me to the core:

“But I don’t know how to read.
Does God still love me even if I can’t read?
I can’t read the Bible.”

Even now, writing this, my eyes fill with tears. I still have to pause. Breathe. Let it pass through me again.

Time seemed to stop. And before my mind could form anything clever or careful, my heart answered:

“Yes. Of course He loves you. Why wouldn’t He?”

That moment stripped faith down to its essence and became unshakably real to me.

• God’s love is not accessed through reading.

• Not earned through understanding.

• Not unlocked by knowledge, education or performance.

There were generations who never learned to read — and yet they were deeply known by God. There are people today who will never hold a Bible in their hands — and yet they are held by Him.

Somewhere along the way, we started confusing knowing about God with being loved by God. We have learned to associate God’s love with our ability to comprehend Him. As if His love were a lesson to be passed, a text to be mastered. As if grace required qualifications. It doesn’t. LOVE CAME FIRST!

If there had been only one person on this planet — only one — Christ would still have come. He would have given His life for that one soul. That is how deep His love goes.

This world is fragile. Broken. It is a sinking ship. And yes, we do what we can. We help where we can. But beneath all of it—deeper than words, deeper than acts themselves—there is one unchanging truth:

God loves you. Profoundly. Completely. Without conditions.

Reading and writing are both gifts and learned skills. Language is a tool.
Technology allows us to reach further than ever before.

But love did not begin with any of these, nor does it depend on them.

Literacy can only give limited language to spiritual experience, while faith is the substance that links us to the Father and forms the ground of that connection.

Faith reminds us:

Before you could read. Before you could write.
Before you could understand.
Before you could explain anything at all —

You were already loved. 🤍✨

Moments like this often remind us of our own encounters, spoken or unspoken. Perhaps something in this story echoes a place you’ve been, a thought you’ve carried, or a question you never fully formed. Faith is sometimes shaped in places where words fall short, and as you sit with this, you may notice what it awakens in you — comfort, discomfort, longing, or recognition. All of it belongs, and none of it needs to be rushed. If something from this wants to come out, it’s welcome here.