For the Love!

If you have read your paper or watched the news or listened to people talk around the water cooler at work recently, you know we live in a world that could use a little more love.  Moms and Dads leaving families, kids killing kids, people too spent to continue taking their own lives, politicians scamming their constituencies, celebs going off the deep end, domestic violence tearing lives apart, …  Where is the love?

“Today shall be a day for love.” so wrote Shakespeare.   The call for us as people is to heed that bit of prose each and every day, yea verily, each and every moment.  The “yea verily” was my little attempt at Shakespearian prose.  Only in living for the love and abiding in the love are we able to live the kind of life we were meant to live.

Jesus was asked, “What is the greatest commandment?”  to which He replied, “The greatest is to love the Lord your God with all your heart…, and to love your neighbor as yourself.”  Have you ever considered what would the world be like if we actually did this?  What would families look like if every member of the troop lived according to that ethic?  How would our schools, businesses, playgrounds, and communities be affected by such a noble truth?  Is this pursuit possible, realistic, doable?

On this day of love, we would be well served to ponder the call of Christ to love as He has called us to love.  This kind of love is the cure for the heart and the hope of humankind.  This kind of love bring healing in place of anger, honesty in place of lies, fidelity in place of wandering, sobriety in place of addiction, poise in place of irrational behavior, stability in place of depression, security in place of fear, and goodness in place of darkness.  Anybody want that?  If so, we must practice (live by) the biblical brand of love.

I leave us with the biblical description of God’s kind of love as found in 1 Corinthians 13, known as The Love Chapter.  In between Barry White, Barry Manilow, and all the other syrupie sweet love songs you will listen to today, give this chapter a close look.  Here is what it says about the kind of love that sets us up for the life God intended for us to lead,

Love is patient, love is kind.  It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.  It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.  Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.  It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.  Love never fails.  …and now these three remain: faith, hope and love.  But the greatest of these is love.  (verses 4-8, 13)

And the greatest love verse ever written, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, in order that whoever believes (embraces Him and lives according to His teachings) in Him might have everlasting life (life to the full here and in eternity). Jn 3:16

Happy Love Day!!

Bruce Smith

optimuslife.org

This entry was posted on 14. February 2008 at 12:16 and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.