All in Love
God is love (1 John 4:8). God and love are synonymous, like God and good. God always loves because He is love. We can’t know true love apart from God since love comes from God (1 John 4:7). Whatever love we experience from others is a reflection of God’s love. We love because he first loved us (1 John 4:19).
Holy brothers—oh my goodness! Yet that is what we are. We, you and I and those Judean believers, are holy—sacred, pure, blameless by Christ’s atonement (2:17). We are set apart to live as holy, separated from sin, since we confess Jesus as our apostle and high priest. And we share in the heavenly calling: to confess Jesus as apostle and high priest to all who will listen, so they too may be holy.
The Tops in Texas rodeo has been a local happening for 59 years in the small East Texas town of Jacksonville. One of the newer, and more popular events, however, is Mutton Busting, which lets children under ten attempt to ride a sheep bareback for six seconds. Sound easy? Those of us unfamiliar with sheep may think so. Remember Mary’s docile little lamb with fleece as white as snow? Not so these Mutton Busting beasts.
While cutting my son’s long, thick locks, I thought, I’m glad he doesn’t ride through the woods or he might get tangled up like Absalom. Do you remember the story?
An ambulance arrived at my house. My son, David, had had a seizure and had taken a pretty hard fall. He dislocated his shoulder and gashed his chin. Before loading my son into the ambulance, the paramedics informed us they would be cutting David’s sweatshirt off to care for his shoulder.
I’ve spent the last several weeks reading and re-reading my favorite passages in Paul’s letter to the Roman believers. I wanted those profound truths to sink into my heart and mind—salvation, redemption, Holy Spirit empowerment, intercession and sovereignty. Paul’s Hymn of Praise perfectly captured how I felt about all I had read.
My grandmother loved to give everyone in the family Christmas gifts. As much as possible she made them by hand. She might make house shoes, hot pan holders, or doilies. She might even go so far as to buy a pair of socks for each of the guys.
“You know, it’s all about love.” A simple statement uttered by a simple man, my dad, as he lay languishing on his deathbed. After all his years of working, serving and living, he had discovered the importance of life.
The day Drew moved out followed ten months of limbo. It had been an awful day. The kids cried themselves to sleep. It was late when Dana climbed into bed. She sat propped up on her side of the double bed and opened her Bible. She hadn’t planned to read Romans 8, but the words were there for her that night.
God’s words touched her gently, much like the romantic gesture of being presented a single, long-stemmed red rose.
Eight months had passed since Drew’s and Dana’s ten-year marriage started to unravel. Uncharacteristically, Drew accompanied Dana and the children to church one Sunday morning. It was Valentine’s Day.
The service was unremarkable until the associate pastor announced he would be teaching on romantic love from Song of Solomon.
Drew and Dana began marriage counseling with a Christian counselor soon after their move. Drew finally admitted to having an extramarital affair. As devastating as the news was, Dana expressed the willingness to forgive him. Her commitment to keep their family intact held steady. Drew wanted a separation, but he took no action to move out.
Following Drew’s confession that he didn’t love her, Dana’s feelings continued to reel. She felt lost at sea one moment and anchored by faith the next. Soon thereafter, Drew received his new job assignment that required moving fifteen hundred miles away.
Dana felt sweet anticipation as the day began. It was her 10th wedding anniversary. Drew, her husband, was home from completing some out-of-town professional training for his new job. The last few months they’d only spent a few weekends together so she was excited about celebrating today.
The trio is back…the mother, the father and their fledgling Cardinals. They regularly visit the platform bird feeder. I like to study their interactions. The fledgling softly chirps while fluffing and vibrating his feathers. Mom and Dad gather seed and pop it into his mouth until the ritual is complete. The youngster looks completely capable of feeding himself. After all, he’s standing among the same birdseed as his parents! Like me, though, he prefers to be fed rather than feed himself.
Wow! I guess it’s not a weed!
I’d sprayed it, trimmed it with scissors, even mowed it multiple times…yet it persevered. Regardless of how I mistreated it, this intruder sent tendrils upward, outward and onward while it clung to the bank of the pond. Now, in a different season of the year, an abundance of tiny pink blossoms brought delight to that same muddy shoreline.
God loves you! Such a simple statement is hard to grasp. How could the all-knowing, all-powerful God of the universe care about you and me? It is a great mystery. He not only cares about us, He loves us more than anyone else could. I’m pretty sure you won’t believe that just because I said it, so let me show you in God’s love letter--the Bible.
By the end of May the Covid threat was lessening, so when aunt ‘Chelle called to recruit blueberry pickers, grandson #3 and I jumped at the chance. It was a gorgeous day. Didn’t matter that we had to drive twenty minutes. Didn’t matter that they had to take our temperature. We were free, our masks were off, and the blueberries were plentiful. Armed with the secret to efficiency—attach your pail to your belt so you can use both hands—we found a row to ourselves.
Paul was on a roll: Mark my words! (5:2), you foolish Galatians! (3:1). They were in Christ by faith; so are we. They were set free by Christ for freedom (5:1); so are we. They were called to be free (5:13), as are we. High time we, along with those Galatians, put our own personal exclamation marks on Paul’s words.
Ladies, I have to admit—it’s the being free in this world of ours with its expectations that gets tricky. And way back then, a mere fifteen or so years from the cross, Paul’s friends in Galatia were being burdened by the rule-making of the religious zealots. Considering that God’s concept of freedom in Eden with its one rule had spiraled down to the 613 Torah plus multi oral laws by Jesus’ time, it was not surprising. Faith was too easy. Let’s add a little circumcision here, some dietary restrictions there, a few of the old feast days. Then you will be saved for sure.
“Jesus loves me, this I know.” Many of us grew up singing this familiar song. What does it mean to be loved? I honestly didn’t know because I grew up in a home that lacked nurture and love. It was an environment full of anger, favoritism (not toward me), physical abuse (toward me), and abandonment (toward my brother and me).
