Yesterday in Foundations, Mr. Bartel read to us 1 John 4:7-12. Love...does this passage reveal something to us about what it is, how we should show it, why we do it?
God is love...what does this mean? When I love, does that mean that I am giving God to someone? If I love, then God abides in me, and His love is perfected in me...how can God's love be perfected in me? If God's love is perfected in me...perhaps that means that the more I love truly, the more I will be able to love truly. But, how do you truly love?
Is love self-sacrifice? Is it sharing? Is it God? Or something more? Love is not merely an emotion, yet it is not merely actions devoid of all feeling. It is a choice, but sometimes we don't want to love.
Love requires not just our hearts, not just our hands, not just our heads, but all three in combination. Love is a feeling, a decision, an action...love must be an act of the whole soul.
Love...is an amazing thing. Often, it hurts to love others. When we give someone ourselves, they will hurt us, they will fail us, they will reject us. Yet God still commands us to love one another. Sometimes we love out of selfish motives...we think that if we just show enough love to this person, they'll love us back and we'll be accepted and safe. Sometimes what we think is love is really shallow emotions or trivial affections.
But still...we love. Because when we do, something beautiful happens. When we love one another, God is made manifest in us. When we love, God's love is perfected in us, and we are able to love even more. I don't know what love is, or what it is like, or why or how I am able to love. But this I know..."Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another."
-1 John 4: 11
3 comments:
WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT THIS! =] I might be planning something soon...
Ooh yes...please do plan something :) May I invite people perhaps? I've had lots of good conversations about this lately and am very very interested in continuing them with many wonderful people :)
I say, my dear Elizabeth, that if it doesn't hurt to love someone, that is, if you must not give up a part of yourself in your choice to love someone, then it is not love, or a true form of love. For self sacrifice is the basis, and, perhaps, the end of true love. Jesus said, "Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends" (John 15:13). The greatest form of love, and the meaning of love itself, is that it is selfless (1st Corinthians 13:4-7). "For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake, he is the one who will save it" (Luke 9:24, echoed in the other three gospels). Love, live, and sacrifice yourself in the process. It is, I believe, the way of Christ.
"And I show you a still more excellent way" (1st Corinthians 12:31).
Post a Comment