The Love Thing: It's Complicated.

Scripture Passage that Caught My Attention today: 1 John 4:19-21 We love because he first loved us. 20 Those who say, “I love God,” and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen. 21 The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.

Observation: These are often-forgotten/often-ignored Bible verses.

Application: What would it take to get us to love one another as much as we say that we love God?

Truth be told, those of us who claim to love God and yet do not really love our neighbors are really living and proclaiming a lie. We can’t do one without the other. It’s not possible. We’d have a better shot a laying an egg.

Still, for some reason we are often undeterred—deluded in our thinking that loving God is necessary and loving others is optional.

Interestingly enough, people of no faith sometimes take the opposite approach. They sometimes do love their neighbors as themselves but find it a stretch to love a God who would allow the people they love to be in such dire straights.

The grace with which verse 19 makes clear is the only hope at the end of the day. We love because God first loved us. If we are really able to love our neighbors as ourselves, it is only because somehow or another we have been filled with more love than we can possibly keep to ourselves. It just oozes out. Christians believe this oozing is because God never stops pouring.

If that’s the case, some might argue that the world would be better served if God quit overflowing some people with love in favor of sprinkling this love more evenly over a larger crowd.

Maybe.

Then again, maybe that’s our job.

Prayer: Lord, please keep pouring your love upon us and move us to be more and more able to share it. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

(Readings today included: Jeremiah 31-32 and 1 John 4)