Let's say you are filling up a flower bed with a bunch of flowers, and by filling up I mean really planting those suckers deep into wonderfully moist and receptive soil, pushing those little plants into what is without question the perfect moment for planting. Get that? Can you feel the emotion of what is a perfect moment? Can you grasp how much love comes pumping down the blood system when we are living in that moment?
Yeah. I can get it every once in a while. It's love without rules. It's love without forcing love on anyone. It's love that doubles as conditions. Love without effort. Love without mistakes. It's gentle, calming, restful, purposeful but genuine. It's love with meaning, love that is God's own, love that is so sweet the bees sit back and gawk.
It's love for love's sake. It's love in the moment. It's love in the future, and it's love in our memory. Love with honesty. Love with brokenness, and love with the shine of a new untrammeled moment, the kind of moment where the giants in your life never win.
It's love with the cross in the distance. Love with the cross up close. Love with Jesus' loving, touching eyes cleft for thee. Love in the moment, warm in the future, shining in memory. Love enough that things change for the better.
The Apostle Paul wrote this about love: "If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don’t love, I’ve gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I’m bankrupt without love. Love never gives up. Love cares more for others than for self. Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have. Love doesn’t strut, Doesn’t have a swelled head, Doesn’t force itself on others, Isn’t always “me first,” Doesn’t fly off the handle, Doesn’t keep score of the sins of others, Doesn’t revel when others grovel, Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth, Puts up with anything, Trusts God always, Always looks for the best, Never looks back, But keeps going to the end."
If you can corral this thing we call love, put a saddle on it, pat it on the neck, walk it around the neighborhood, let its brokenness be full and memorable, perhaps we can love without strutting, love without swelling, love without forcing itself on others, and never fly off the handle.
It seems to me this morning that only God can truly love this way, giving us an example of unconditional and fresh love so that we can respond in the same manner. Without God's effort, we can't love; without God's example, we fail each and every time.
Paul clinches love's championship with these words: "Love never dies. Inspired speech will be over some day; praying in tongues will end; understanding will reach its limit. We know only a portion of the truth, and what we say about God is always incomplete. But when the Complete arrives, our incompletes will be canceled."
Our Complete is full and measured and whole. The Apostle John said this: "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."
God is love. Love is God. God the Father showed his love for us by walking into flesh, walking while wearing flesh, walking the walk and talking the treasure trove of Words.
That's the way, and most assuredly the truth.
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