Cultivating Love

Love is the key to life, right? I mean, the Bible makes that pretty clear.

Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: "Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?" Jesus replied: " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments." Matthew 22:34-40

"A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another." - John 13:34-35

If I speak in the tongues 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. [...] And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. - I Corinthians 13:1-3, 13

Love trumps everything. At the end of the day, we better have loved others well. So how do we do that? Everything in our culture teaches us to love ourselves and not others. Everything in our natural sinful inclinations teaches us to love ourselves and not others. Sometimes it's pretty easy to love our friends, sometimes it's really hard. But then you throw in that pesky command to love your enemies and what can you do? You can never get away from the fact that we are supposed to love everyone all the time. Like God.

I think that the enemy has done his very best to convince us that we cannot control love. That love is something that just happens, with no effort or choice on our part. But Jesus says the most important commandments are to love. So, if we're being commanded to do something, doesn't it stand to reason that we can control it?

I'm not saying that we can always control every part of love. Love is way too complicated for that. We can't always control how we feel. Sometimes we don't even understand how we feel. Sometimes we know how we feel very clearly, and it's not love!

I'm not the first person to every say this. I'm not sharing some profound insight I've had that I've never heard of before. I was just thinking recently how about how you can still choose to act lovingly even when you really don't feel it. It's pretty unlikely that you're going to love your enemy right out of the starting gate. But you can still act lovingly. And the weirdest part is that you can act yourself right into a feeling. You can choose to behave a certain way and through that behavior, you can find yourself creating or discovering a new reality.

When the enemy tries to feed us a lie, it pays to search out the truth. And I think the truth of love is that it is a lot of hard work. But it's also totally worth it. Have you ever grown a garden, or even just a flower? It's a lot of work! You have to tend it with care, feeding and watering it. Each kind of plant requires different amounts of sunlight. Some require certain types of soil. Some need to be pruned, some need to be pinched back. I cannot raise a fern to save my life. They can't stand any breezes and like to be sprayed with water constantly, which I can never remember to do. They take amazing amounts of work.

Have you ever walked into a beautiful garden and just been overwhelmed by the beauty of it? Did your little plant that you once grew flower and just fill you with joy? Love takes tons of work. Sometimes you think nothing will ever come of it. Sometimes it's easy and you can sing to your plants. Sometimes you just can't make love grow. But when it does, when it flowers and turns into something extraordinary, when the fruit comes, it can take your breath away!

Don't buy into the lie that love just happens. Don't buy into the lie that love is easy. Love is hard work. But it's something we are commanded to do. And the rewards are amazing!