I have been very sick with bronchitis for a while. But while I was sick God really did a tremendous work in me. He dealt with me on issues of pride, humility and love, mainly love. One thing I have noticed is that when you start talking about love, people are kind of "Yeah, whatever" because we throw the word around so much we think we have gotten it already. Then we have the other church folks who are so "deep" that they try to spiritualize it to the point that love starts to look like hate and according to their "theology", justifiably so.
But I'm at a point in my life where I take very seriously the words of Christ where He said that all of the law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments. I like that because it makes me feel like, " Okay, so if I just focus on walking in love, the big picture, everything else will fall into place." I also find myself spending a lot of time thinking about what Paul said in I Corinthians 13 about how we can understand all mysteries, speak with the tongues of men and angels, die as martyrs and give all we have to the poor, yet if we have not love we have gained nothing.
It is so simple, and yet we make it so hard. What is so difficult about stopping and asking ourselves,"How would I want to be approached in this situation? How would I want to be talked to? How would I want to be talked about? How would I want to be treated?" But we don't do it then we make all kinds of excuses about why our mean, moody and insecure behavior is okay.
Love demands a maturity of us that aint no joke. It forces us to approach a brother or sister in love, rather than talk about them to everyone else behind their back. It ask us to believe the best of others, when appearances seem otherwise, I causes us to step forward in defence of the weak, and to put the needs of others ahead of ourselves. It gives us the humility to offer praise when it is due, to listen and consider the ideas of others and to be gracious to those who can't do a thing for us. It makes us forgive rather than engaging in spiteful petty behaviors.
It makes us stop measuring our love walk by how we treat those whom we like or have use for.
But I'm at a point in my life where I take very seriously the words of Christ where He said that all of the law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments. I like that because it makes me feel like, " Okay, so if I just focus on walking in love, the big picture, everything else will fall into place." I also find myself spending a lot of time thinking about what Paul said in I Corinthians 13 about how we can understand all mysteries, speak with the tongues of men and angels, die as martyrs and give all we have to the poor, yet if we have not love we have gained nothing.
It is so simple, and yet we make it so hard. What is so difficult about stopping and asking ourselves,"How would I want to be approached in this situation? How would I want to be talked to? How would I want to be talked about? How would I want to be treated?" But we don't do it then we make all kinds of excuses about why our mean, moody and insecure behavior is okay.
Love demands a maturity of us that aint no joke. It forces us to approach a brother or sister in love, rather than talk about them to everyone else behind their back. It ask us to believe the best of others, when appearances seem otherwise, I causes us to step forward in defence of the weak, and to put the needs of others ahead of ourselves. It gives us the humility to offer praise when it is due, to listen and consider the ideas of others and to be gracious to those who can't do a thing for us. It makes us forgive rather than engaging in spiteful petty behaviors.
It makes us stop measuring our love walk by how we treat those whom we like or have use for.
5 comments:
I think you have a special gift of putting complex thoughts into wonderful words.
I fully agree with your thoughts on how to approach people. I sometimes talk about compassion i.s.o. love but I think we mean the same.
Thx for sharing this. Hope you illness doesn't bother you no more..
Thanks Dimitri! I'm feeling much better!
Glad you're better.
Along these thoughts, I recently had someone criticizing me for presuming to know the Will of God, saying it was near blasphemy.
My response?
It's not hard to know God's Will: It's simply to love.
How to love - now that gets somewhat trickier I suppose, but I agree with you that it's not that tricky.
Sorry to hear you've been under the weather, Ange. Are you burning your candles at both ends?
I'm trying not to, MCM, but we are at the end of the quarter . . .
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