"As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you: continue ye in my love."
John 15:9
Sometimes it seems like we forget that the very foundation of the gospel is love. All commandments are based on it, the whole creation and plan of salvation is based on it... everything that God does and asks of us is based on it. And yet we so often misunderstand it or think that it is some earthly version of "love" ... manipulation or coercion masked as love, or that God's love is some lame, ineffectual, empty platitude rather than the real, life-changing, universe-shaping force that it is.
If we remember nothing else today, let's try to remember love. Not teenage vampire love or uncontrolled desire, or any of the false, obsessive types of lust that we so often believe that we have no power to choose... but real, enduring, chosen love. The love that we work at every day, reaching out to others when it would be easier to focus on ourselves. The love that God blesses us with, that gives us hope for others and hope for the future. The love that can lift us out of selfishness and bias to care for others who are very different from ourselves.
Let's continue in that love, and pray for that love when we can't seem to feel it on our own. God wants to help us learn to love all of the people around us, and know how to help them. Let's act on that knowledge and love not only in word, but "in deed and in truth" (1 John 3:18).
John 15:9
Sometimes it seems like we forget that the very foundation of the gospel is love. All commandments are based on it, the whole creation and plan of salvation is based on it... everything that God does and asks of us is based on it. And yet we so often misunderstand it or think that it is some earthly version of "love" ... manipulation or coercion masked as love, or that God's love is some lame, ineffectual, empty platitude rather than the real, life-changing, universe-shaping force that it is.
If we remember nothing else today, let's try to remember love. Not teenage vampire love or uncontrolled desire, or any of the false, obsessive types of lust that we so often believe that we have no power to choose... but real, enduring, chosen love. The love that we work at every day, reaching out to others when it would be easier to focus on ourselves. The love that God blesses us with, that gives us hope for others and hope for the future. The love that can lift us out of selfishness and bias to care for others who are very different from ourselves.
Let's continue in that love, and pray for that love when we can't seem to feel it on our own. God wants to help us learn to love all of the people around us, and know how to help them. Let's act on that knowledge and love not only in word, but "in deed and in truth" (1 John 3:18).
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