Tim Booth sings "love can mean anything", Johnny Bramwell's take is "to be loved is to be divine". If we're honest we probably take a lot of what we think about love from the lyrics of the songs we listen too, in the same way much of our theology is formed by hymns.
My stance is probably somewhere between Booth and Bramwell; love, which can take many forms, does indeed give us a glimpse of what God is like. Most of the metaphors we have are inadequate to explain or understand divine love. Jesus works with the parent/child metaphor, which comes the closest to helping our understanding but which we will still never fully understand.
Falling in love is one of the most profoundly spiritual experiences a person can have. By falling in love we discover our capacity for selflessness. We experience what it means to entrust ourselves, our souls and bodies, to another. When we fall in love as God does, we too will ultimately “stretch out [our] arms of love on the hard wood of the cross,” just as Jesus did.
-Br. James Koester
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