05/11/2017
Do we know what love is, and do we understand the depth to which it should be applied to those around us? This is my contemplation this morning, and that I truly show the love of Jesus Christ.
Our ability to love is a gift to us, but it is one that we must work at perfecting. The basic attributes of love are felt the minute it erupts within us, but then comes the process of adding depth to it.
When I first met my wife I felt an infatuation that was quickly followed by an intense emotional love. I was nearly overcome by the power of it, but I also had seen the product of years of love, older men and women in love, and knew that this love would somehow transform itself over time. What I didn't know was that this transformation didn't come by the passage of time alone.
Love is a great joy, but it is also the source of our greatest pain and suffering. Love begins with a heavy dose of lust, but over time refines itself until what is left in the cask is a wine of remarkable and subtle taste, color, and smell. It is like a fine wine that is hard to describe, but once tasted, never leaves your palate, and whose experience causes you to pause and close your eyes to all else. Love is the very essence of our lives, and our faith.
To perfect love... whether it be the love for our God, our spouse, our children, our families, or others around us, requires work and patience in it's making. It doesn't begin complete and requires all we are in life to complete it. When we decide to love, all the experiences in life will become a part of it. We will find great joy that comes from finding and sharing it. We will experience suffering like we never knew possible. We will experience heartbreaks that shake us to the core. We will feel tenderness that exceeds all bounds, and we will make sacrifices that are beyond all logic and reason. Love encompasses everything we are, and all there is in life. This is why it is so central to the Bible, and why it is the core of the two greatest commandments...
“And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.' The second is this: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these."”
Mark 12:30-31 ESV
Yet, even as love grows, it can ebb, but it never truly leaves us. Love unmanaged, and unrequited, can change and become the foundation for immense hatred. This ravished love destroys us, and faith.
“For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
2 Peter 1:8 ESV
Jesus speaks to us of adding certain things to our love. He does this so that our loves can grow into a fullness of beauty, and not be twisted by the dark one into the great hatred and evil of which we just spoke. Love makes us, but it can also destroy us, and our faith that is such a part of us.
“For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love.”
2 Peter 1:5-7 ESV
So Jesus tells us of love, and He also commands us to embrace it. It becomes one of His commandments to us, and not just the frail love of its first beginning, but the fullness of Love realized in its maturity... the love of God for us... the love of Christ.
“"This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.”
John 15:12 ESV
Love is who we are, and we are nothing without it. We can understand who God is, but have no relationship with Him without love. We can be attracted to our spouse, but there is only lust without it. We can have sex and procreate, but no family can be formed without it. Love is the core of all our joy, sorrow, satisfaction, and regret. Love is who we are and what become. It is the greatest gift that God has given us, and the essence that was contained in His breath at creation. Love is living, and living the breath of life.
“then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.”
Genesis 2:7 ESV
Some say that our greatest gift in life is self awareness, and our soul... but I offer that none of these other things matter without love.
Prayer:
Father, thank you for your gift of love. Thank you for loving me and for allowing me to love you back. I would never have known you without this gift, and never understood your desire in my creation. Love is a piece of You that links us together as one, and is the ingredient in salvation that is indispensable... thank you Father for this... the DNA of divinity. Jesus, I thank you for exhibiting the greatest love of all by suffering for me, and offering your life on the cross to save me. Help me to love as you loved me, and to follow your commandments in love. Let your words always be in my ears...
“Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you.”
John 15:13-14 ESV
For Lord you lead me in love, because of love, and for love. This is our essence, and the true aroma of faith, and heaven. Praised be the name of the Lord, for He is Greatly to be praised... His love endures forever.
Rich Forbes