I like those two words together. I also like it as a "life strategy." No matter what happens to you, if you really trust Christ, love will ultimately win. Love, according to Scripture, is the greatest thing (I Cor. 13:13). Surely we should pay attention to the greatest thing. My brother shared a video link with me some time ago and I forgot it, but today I ran across this short animation of Disney (it's up for an Oscar in the short film category) called "Paperman." Watch it. It's simple, very simple, beautifully rendered, and reminds us that love is a force that moves us, transforms us, and can give us courage and hope to rise above the ordinary.
Love is something that still has a lot of mystery to it....like the mystery of whatever was guiding the paper airplanes in the video. To me the greatest mystery of all is described in 1 John 3:16: This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us.
Christ died not merely as a way to get us to heaven, but as the way to defeat our own self-destructive selfishness and to empower us to really love God and people.
An article from ChristianityToday.com (http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2010/february/19.57.html?paging=off) reminds us of the core of agape love, namely the welfare of the beloved. The article states:
"Agape wills the objective good of the beloved," writes Peter Kreeft (author of The God Who Loves You). "Thus it wills or tolerates suffering when suffering is necessary for the beloved's true, objective good." He goes on to explain that this is why loving parents discipline their children, and why God does not wipe every tear away until his return. While agape often overlaps with kindness, and is always teeming with emotion, God still takes a long-range view of the beloved's best interest. God's pure self-forgetful gift-love has a perfect view of the beloved's needs and true fulfillment.
Is your life working well for you? It might be a good time to look at how much agape love is flowing through you from our Father's heart to those around you. What does that kind of love look like? Check out 1 Corinthians 13....it's VERY specific!
One of my favorite definitions of love is: acting in the best interest of another PERIOD. That's a bit of a paraphrase of 1 John 3:18: Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth. So let love MOVE you....to the Savior Who loves you, and to the people you meet everyday who need your love!
1 comment:
On the day you officiated your first wedding ceremony, you told us that you spell LOVE, TIME. We have never forgotten this important part of marriage and have watched others that did not spend time together, move apart and some have divorced. Thank you again for sharing this important part of a relationship. I believe that God also wants time with us each day because He LOVEs us.
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