Wednesday, February 15, 2023

“My beloved friends, let us continue to love each other since love comes from God. Everyone who loves is born of God and experiences a relationship with God. The person who refuses to love doesn’t know the first thing about God, because God is love—so you can’t know him if you don’t love. This is how God showed his love for us: God sent his only Son into the world so we might live through him. This is the kind of love we are talking about—not that we once upon a time loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to clear away our sins and the damage they’ve done to our relationship with God.” (1 John 4: 10 – 17, The Message Bible)

                Happy belated Valentine’s Day to one and all. I hope your day was full of love and beauty. We celebrated here with a Swiss Chalet dinner, complete with desserts.  We went decadently whole hog – or whole chicken, I suppose - by even having it delivered. Ain’t love grand!

                But, of course, love is grand. Or, at least, it is supposed to be. Not just romantic love but the Love that was given to us to shape our lives, guide our relationships and influence the world about us. God’s Love - a deep-rooted, high-spirited, radical and uncompromising dynamic which flows from God to us and through us and on to others.

                Much has been said, written, sung, poeticized and been given testimony to concerning love. No word is more misunderstood, abused and damaged than love. No word causes more confusion, angst, pain and heartache than love.  But we would not want a world without love.

                When we allow God’s Love (Agape) to be the bed rock for our own actions of love, it reshapes the definitions we heap on love. Love is the sacred act of compassion, tenderness, grace, forgiveness, joy, non-threatening peace, hope all rolled into one.

                This Love supresses judgment, bigotry, pride, self-interest, anger, and bitterness. This Love brings us closer to God and also to each other. If we view others through the lens of God’s Love, we learn and practice inclusion, tolerance, acceptance, welcoming and the true meaning of open arms.

                Unfortunately, God’s Love has to fight for its rightful place in our world. It has to overcome obstacles and barriers we throw in its way. God’s Love gets belittled  and lost in the harshness of hunger, poverty, wars, violence and hatred that shatter Love’s message.

                Despite that, God never gives up on his Love for us and the world. “This is how much God loved the world: He gave his Son, his one and only Son. And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life. God didn’t go to all the trouble of sending his Son merely to point an accusing finger, telling the world how bad it was. He came to help, to put the world right again.” (John 3: 16 -17, The Message)

                Love puts the world right again. That is one powerful message.  It will need God behind the effort for Love to take its rightful place in our world, in our minds, in our hearts and in our actions. God’s Love repairs the damage we do to him and to others. God’s Love holds us responsible to reproduce, in human form, the Love he gives us through Jesus and through the Spirit.

                “Jesus said, ‘The first commandment in importance is, ‘Listen, Israel: The Lord your God is one; so love the Lord God with all your passion and prayer and intelligence and energy.’ And here is the second: ‘Love others as well as you love yourself.’ There is no other commandment that ranks with these.’” (Mark 12: 29 -31)

                Get it? Nothing is greater than Love.

                Pass it on!

 Dale