Grounding Christianity in love

From today's Daily Meditation from Richard Rohr (emphasis his):

Franciscans never believed that “blood atonement” was required for God to love us. We believed that Christ was Plan A from the very beginning (Colossians 1:15-20, Ephesians 1:3-14, John 1:1-18). ... The Franciscan view grounds Christianity in love and freedom from the very beginning. It creates a coherent and positive spirituality, which draws us toward lives of inner depth, prayer, reconciliation, healing, and universal at-one-ment, instead of any notion of sacrifice, which implies God needs to be bought off. Nothing changed on Calvary, but everything was revealed as God’s suffering love—so that we could change!

And in a very complementary way, here is today's reflection from Craig Bullock (emphasis mine):

Many years ago, I went to my spiritual director complaining that I was praying to God for guidance, but God was not responding. He answered, “You know, God is very busy. He has many responsibilities.” I asked him if that meant that God was too busy to answer my prayers. He said, “No, but God is not going to waste time speaking to you if you are not going to listen to what He has to say.” Simply put, God’s miraculous love can only break into our lives to the degree that we are open to it, without conditions or qualifications. In other words, the willingness to obey God’s guidance is the necessary precondition for receiving guidance. We are hesitant to be open and obedient because we fear what God might do. We believe that God wants to limit our happiness, when, in actuality, God’s will is the only source of true happiness. Yogananda tells us that, “God is love; His plan for creation is rooted only in love.” And he also says, “There is no other way to find God’s love than to surrender to Him.”