Love doesn’t calculate. Love is innocent. Love yearns and it follows. But love does not ask: what will I gain? Could I really get there?
The word “love” is used very sparingly in Tanach. In all of Tanach, Avraham Avinu is the only one that Hashem describes as: “the one who loved Me” (Yeshaya 41:8). (It is said of Shlomo Hamelech: “and he loved Hashem” (1 Melachim 3:3), and Dovid Hamelech declares: “I love you Hashem, my strength” (Tehillim 18:2). Indeed, Dovid Hamelech’s love for Hashem still inspires Klal Yisroel today and Shlomo Hamelech wrote Shir Hashirm. But Avraham still stands out with his love for Hashem highlighted as part of his very identity, and this from Hashem, in the first person.)
Avraham did not know where his love would lead him to. Avraham did not know where it could possibly lead him to. How could a created being form a bond with the Creator of all? But love does not calculate, love just follows. Avraham saw that Hashem desires kindness, he followed kindness. Avraham saw that Hashem desires truth, he followed truth. He didn’t stop to ask himself; how could I ever reach Hashem’s kindness or Hashem’s truth? Avraham yearned and he followed.
Rus didn’t calculate either. She didn’t ask herself: what hope is there for a Moabite widow in Hashem’s nation? She just followed.
Klal Yisroel didn’t calculate. They did not ask themselves: where will this relationship end up? How could we, created beings, form any meaningful relationship with the Creator of all? They just followed Hashem into the desert (Yirmiyahu 2:2).
Shavuos is not about love. Pesach is about love. Pesach is when Klal Yisroel followed Hashem into the unknown, into the impossible. Pesach is followed by seven weeks. Seven weeks of yearning. Seven weeks of following.
Shavuos is Hashem’s reciprocation to sincere love. On this day Hashem reached out to Klal Yisroel with the innermost expression of His will; His holy Torah. Hashem formed an eternal bond with this nation that loved Him; a bond that would have been impossible to imagine. A bond between Creator and created. But love does not follow rules.
The love that Rus had for Hashem brought her to the center of Hashem’s plan for the universe. She would become the mother of Dovid, Shlomo, Chizkiyahu and Moshiach. She could never have dreamed of such an outcome. But love does not look at the outcome. Love simply follows.
Hashem responded to Avraham’s love with Yitzchok, the child of laughter. Laughter; because it does not make sense. A child to a one-hundred year old man?! A child that will father a nation of human beings that will be granted an eternal commission from Hashem; a commission to carry the truth, the holiness and the brocha of the Creator of all throughout the corridors of history. Is it possible for created beings to be entrusted with the work of the Creator of all?! Could Avraham have imagined that this is where his love would lead him to? Of-course not! But Avraham wasn’t looking for a payoff when he began his journey of love. Avraham simply loved, and love does not calculate.