"And it came to pass that I beheld a tree, whose fruit was desirable to make one happy."
1 Nephi 8:10
I really like this description of the Tree of Life. It sounds like just looking at the tree, you know how perfect it is and how delicious the fruit is, and how enormously happy you will be, there, partaking of that fruit. Since the tree represents the love of God (see 1 Nephi 11:8-23), it seems like you would know all of those things about it. Nephi describes the tree saying "the beauty thereof was far beyond, yea, exceeding of all beauty" and that it is "precious above all." We can instinctively tell that God's love will make us happy. :)
That makes me really think about the love that God offers us. It isn't any average/normal kind of love that we experience from other people. We might get a taste of that kind of love from a good parent, friend, or family member, but even they "may forget" when God definitely will not (Isaiah 49:15). God's love is transcendent and joyous... it can fill us to overflowing with goodness and happiness. I believe that we consistently underestimate the way that God feels about us, and the vastness of his love. And we misunderstand it sometimes as well, thinking that God's love can be manipulated in strange "love blackmail" attempts that we sometimes make, or encounter with other people, like "if you really loved me, you would..." (modify your behavior to suit me) or thinking that we can get away with bad behavior because we are loved. Neither of those is true, at least to any greater extent than for any other person... God is *already* bending over backwards trying to save us from ourselves, and giving us a chance to overcome our bad behavior. He is never going to embrace or encourage it, and he modified his behavior a lot when he died for our sins... he isn't going to modify it further. The point of this second-chance life that he is giving us is so that we can learn to do things the other way around, and love HIM, and modify our behavior to be like *his*.
Which brings us back around to the first and great commandment, right? Loving God is our first job, just as his is to love us. The problem with all of us is that we don't do a great job on our side, and he does a superb job on his. We need to do better. We're really bad at even treating God as well as a friend sometimes, let alone like the single most important person in our lives. Today, let's re-examine our love a little bit, and see where we can improve, rather than thinking that it is God that needs to love *us* better.
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