I find that in today's society, love is an overused word. We use it to describe our positive feelings towards everything, from our family and friends to a video of a cat playing the piano on the Internet. In the film Love & Marriage, the protagonists have a conversation in which one of them wondered - in the case of an elderly couple who have been together for decades - if the word 'love' becomes just another word, like so many others; that they have said it so many times, they might as well say "I cheese sandwich you" to each other. Worse still, we even substitute the word 'love' for a heart symbol, so that traditional language is no longer even used to describe the emotion of love. This, in my opinion, cheapens love and takes away from what it really is. Furthermore, we seemed to have changed the meaning of love, as though it can only refer to one of two things: either these things which cheapen it, or romantic love. The love of one sibling for another or a parent for their child is seldom mentioned, and if it is then the reference is brief or even made to sound 'wrong'. Especially in the former, if one says to the other that they love them, their sentiment is met with jeers that they have used the word wrongly: that such a public expression of love is meant for romantic partners and no one else.

Yet the simple fact that we can feel so many different kinds of love for so many different kinds of people - for our partners, for our family, for our friends, even for that stranger in the street who seems to be having a bad day - is a demonstration of just how much love encircles us. Love seems to be the number one sort-after thing in society, and loneliness is considered one of the worse fates that could ever be experienced. It is almost as though love is something that is an integral part of our humanity.

I rarely watch nature programmes, but my nan says the same thing about all of them: "Nature is cruel". I once heard the story of a duck who had two children: one strong, the other weak. The mother sacrificed the weaker child in favour of the stronger one, because she knew that if she tried to care for both of them, then both of them would die. Focusing on the stronger one would mean that it has a greater chance to survive, and the weaker one would die anyway. It is stories such as this that cause some people to remark that "nature is cruel", and that there is no true love of any kind outside of humanity. It remains, in our eyes at least, a very human trait.

NB: I am not trying to say that there is no love in the animal world, for there are certainly instances when we see that there is love between animals or between animals and humans. I am merely making the statement that cases such as the mother duck and her weak child are heard of far more often in the animal world than the human world.

At this point, I feel obliged to wonder exactly what love is. How can you define an emotion that covers such a vast range of feelings, relationships and circumstances? Well, I think the Bible gives us this answer. There are many passages in the Bible solely about love, and one of these is 1 John 4:7-21. In verses 8 and 16b, the same phrase is repeated: "God is love". It is not only the case that God does love, but also that God is love. And when you read this alongside 1 Corinthians 13:4-13 (the most famous passage on love in the Bible) you see many similarities between the characteristics of love as listed by Paul, and the characteristics of God:

• "patient and kind" (verse 4)
• "not happy with evil, but is happy with the truth" (verse 6)
• "love is eternal" (verse 8)

And if God is love, then love - especially God's love - must be all those things that God is. One of the simplest ways of describing God is that He is a Person who is bigger than anyone or anything else - there is no one like Him; He is everywhere and in everything. Love, then, must also be all these things.

I am currently on summer holiday, and am trying to make the most of my time off. This includes going out places, and often in a car. As I don't drive, I spend most car journeys listening to music and staring out of the window. A couple of weeks ago, I was in a car driving home, and around the corner from my house we got caught at traffic lights. Staring out of the window, I saw lots of people walking up and down the street, from all walks of life and almost every form of identity that you can possibly imagine. All of these people that I did not know, and there were so many of them. I began to think about how astonishing it is that God loves each and every one of these people as much as He loves me: every single one of that vast number of people.

God's love for all people is something we see throughout the Bible, particularly in the Old Testament. The Old Testament has kind of a bad reputation for being brutal and depressing, with battles and bloody scenes and betrayal and corruption. Sometimes it is even thought that God's true love for humanity it not shown until He sends Jesus down to die for us on the cross. But the Old Testament is truly the story of how, over a period of around 2000 years, God showed His love to His people:

• The very first question we hear God ask in the Bible is, "Where are you?" (Genesis 3:9) This shows that He is determined to be in a relationship with us, even when we turn away from Him
• God delivers on His promise to Abraham for a son, even though Abraham was old and his wife Sarah was barren (Genesis 21:1-3)
• The nation of Israel is brought up out of slavery in Egypt (Exodus 12:31-42)
• When Moses asks to see the LORD's presence, God not only fulfils his request, but covers his face over, for He knows that no one can see Him and remain alive (Exodus 33:18-23)
• Gideon is allowed to test God not once, but twice, in order to overcome his doubt (Judges 6:36-40)
• God explains that He has rescued nations other than the Israelites - even nations that the Israelites consider enemies - from dangerous situations, thus showing that He does not only love His "chosen people", but all nations as they are all part of His Creation

Yet, for all of the love God has shown humanity throughout the Old Testament, His ultimate act of love for us is no doubt sending His one and only Son, Jesus, to die for us on the cross. John wrote that God loved the world so much that Jesus was sent to die for our salvation (John 3:16), and Paul wrote that God showed His love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners (Romans 5:8). What is also apparent in these verses is that God chose to send Jesus to die for us. He could have not done so, and He would have still been perfect. But, like He was not coerced into Creating the universe, God was not coerced into sending Jesus down to earth to die for all humanity. He chose to do so, purely out of love for us.

I have already said in Creator God that we reflect the characteristics of God, simply because we are His Creation. Not only do we reflect the creativity by which we first came into being, but we also reflect God's love. It is because of this reflection that love seems to be the most important thing in the world, why we crave for it in all or any of its many forms. Because we were Created in the image of God, we reflect the characteristics of God; because we were Created in the image of God, we love. Therefore it is not surprising that when Jesus took all 614 (approximately) rules of the Law of Moses and condensed them into two simple sentences in Luke 10:27, they are both about love:

"Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind."

And,

"Love your neighbour as you love yourself."