All the Love

15. February 2008 by BruceSmith.

C.S. Lewis, who initially came to the love of God kicking and screaming according to his own testimony, and who endured the loss of his beloved, wrote the following,

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket- safe, dark, motionless, airless–it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.”

Here, on the day after Valentines, as you venture into what for many will be a “love weekend”, how’s your love quotient?

The scriptures tell us that it is “the love of God which draws us to repentance”.  It is also the love of God expressed through us and others which draws the best out of us.  My encouragement to you today, amidst your joy, accomplishments, despair, and defeats from the past week, is to focus your heart toward the love.  For the next three days, at soccer fields, at coffee houses, movie houses, houses of worship, highways, byways, skyways, and in all ways…show the love.  If you keep your heart to yourself this weekend, the world will be deprived of the very thing God intends for it to experience more than anything else.

Open your heart, unshackle your love, and give yourself away.  Give yourself in soup houses to the homeless.  Give your heart to the grieving.  Open your soul to the depressed.  Extend your touch to the dying.  And fill your arms with those in need of the assurance of love and acceptance.  Nothing heals like the love of God–share it.

In doing so, you very well may experience what one supporter of Optimus experienced this week.  A businessman, successful, good-looking, and vibrant by any standard…this Optimus supporter shared with me, yesterday, how he was invited to speak in a local school to teenagers about the sanctity of life and the nature of loving relationships.  As he shared how these teens responded, male and female, to his vulnerable sharing of his own failures and redemption, it was clear that the hour or two of loving those teenagers was worth more than any amount of money he made this past week.  His face was aglow as he told me how “they just got it”.  His sense was that a few, perhaps more, will be saved painful mistakes, and will find the true meaning and source of true love.  It just does not get any better than that.

Its all about the love.

Love,

Bruce Smith

optimuslife.org

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »