When I first started to go to church again in high school, I remember making fun of the music. (my apologies Cornerstone Community Church) Not because it was old style hymns or the muscians were untalented, but I just couldn't get over how all the music sounded like love ballads. I used to think - people could sing this stuff to their girlfriends or boyfriends, but they are singing it to Jesus?!?! WHAT?!?!
Well, God is love. The greatest gifts he has given us, including his son, have come from his infinite, unconditional love for us. John 3:16 says: "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son." Okay. Fact - God loves us. But I think the reason why some Christian praise songs sound like love songs is because our love for God and his love for us can be emulated in one of God's greatest gifts to man - relationships. So we often think that the spouse is the one we could never live without, because we love them in similar way that we love God, and we definitely can't live without him. Does that make sense?
I believe God has given us mothers, daughters, friends, brothers, wives, and husbands so that we can be like him, so that we can love unconditionally through all the faults and all the obstacles. God loves us despite all that we do, He forgives us when we screw up, and He does everything to ultimately build us up and show us how much he cares. If we are asked to be like him, than we must practice the same type of love.
Jesus said in one line before the famous 3:16 in John 3:15 - "I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you." He loved us enough to take upon himself the ulitmate burden. I believe, even if God doesn't call us to take on such huge burdens for each other, that he has given each of us the capacity for "big love" - love for each other modeled after the love we have for God.
The greatest commandment is to love God with all your heart and the second is to love your neighbor as yourself. We were designed not for eternal isolation, but for living together and interacting with one another. Life’s greatest joys come in our relationships with other people. Love means a willingness to be inconvenienced, a willingness to set aside our own concerns to attend to the needs of someone else. Love is a lot more than good feelings—it must also include good actions. And there is nothing that can make a person feel more fullfilled in life than to love.
LOVE:
If I speak in the tongues[a] of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
1 Cortinthians 13
You are right. LOVE makes EVERYTHING worth while!! :) It was funny, my Mom has always told me she loves me unconditionally and I could never do anything to lose that love. Over the years it has been a source of complete comfort and allowed to do things that most people might be afraid to try and it was because I knew my Mom, my grandma's and many others would love me rich or poor or failing or successful. How liberating that kind of love is. But I never truly understood that kind of all consuming love until I looked at my son. And then I realized just how far my Mom's love actually went for me, it stretches beyond what I can grasp. Then I thought, if I love my son this much, and my other loves me this much, imagine how much love god has for us. His children who he created and knew when we were being formed in the womb. What a powerful and liberating love...that everyone can have, that everyone can enjoy.
ReplyDeleteI want to take my comment one step further...
ReplyDeleteI was in a leadership class where we did this project where the teacher asked a bunch of questions and if the answer was "yes" you either took a step forward or back depending on what the question was. So if you have ever been called a name because of your race take a step back. Etc. Well we all ended up somewhere around each other showing that all of us had faced some kind of diversity and yet we were all here in this class and had achieved some measure of success.
But what got to me was one of the questions.
The teacher asked if your Mom or Dad ever told you you could do anything you wanted to take a step forward, and I could not believe how many of my classmates I left behind. I teared up and could barely contain my sadness at the thought that these beautiful people had never been told how wonderful they were in the eyes of the people that had brought them into this world.
I was a mother then I just could not believe that love just didn't shower from their parents. It was a hard pill to swallow, because my family rich on very little had always been rich in love. Despite all our fights or failings or things we did wrong, we loved right.
I thought that everyone experienced that kind of love, I mean if you have parents right? But I learned through my relationships and friends that some people do not have that kind of love to depend on, that some people think love depends on how successful you become or good you are at something. But that love is available to all of us.