Maybe it is apt for the “month of Love” to bring up this topic?
We are having discussions this week about love with family and friends. What it is, how is it experienced, how to love back, and all the surrounding complexities.
I have not heard so many “buts” in a long time… Putting love into words is complicated. Putting love into actions seems to be easier but so frequently misunderstood because love can cause an action, but the same action doesn’t cause love…
“Love is a choice” – I have chosen to love Brussel Sprouts… (but I still don’t like it..)
When a waitress puts a cup of coffee in front of me… its… well… coffee. When my wife puts a cup in front of me. It is love, and my heart skips a beat, knowing where that action came from!
Viktor Frankl said… ”A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life l saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth — that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love.”
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son”
(John 3:16)
…and all God asks is “love me back”
So as I am struggling through what it means to love God with all your heart, mind, soul, body and strength, He brought into my line of sight a completely left-field passage from the Old Testament.
It was like God said: take your time…
“A bruised reed He will not break
and a smouldering wick He will not snuff out”
(Matt 12:20, Is 42:3, NIV)
