Love is…
When I was a girl in the late 70s, I collected a sticker book of the Love is cartoons – a whimsical and often poignant collection of thoughts about what love may be. Of course as life goes on you discover exactly how many things love can be, and ways it needs to be shown and grown.
The writer of 1 John gives us a further pointer to what love is. For Jesus, love meant giving up his life for us – absolutely everything then! We can perhaps grasp that in Jesus – but he goes one further than that – we too should give our life for others. Love is not just talk, but action. We have all seen instances when love, or lack of it, has made a powerful difference in someone’s life. So what God asks of us is that we believe in him – and love one another. That is a pretty tall order. Human beings a strange bunch! We all have our different quirks and foibles. I for one can be pretty difficult to love – unreasonable and self-focused. But that is what God asks us to do – to love one another.
Perhaps Peter in his speech in Acts gives us a pointer to how that might begin to be possible. When asked, ‘Whose power have you got?’, his reply was easy – ‘The power of the name of Jesus of Nazareth’. That is how he achieved what h did, and how we can achieve what is asked of us to. Not in our own strength, not by what we can manage to offer – but by the power of his name.
Jesus came that we ‘might have life in it’s fullness‘. That means love – giving and receiving. Living in God’s love and sharing that love with everyone else. Not easy, but very powerful.
Love is – giving our lives for others. Love is – not talk, but action. Love is – powerful – in God’s name.
Pam's Perambulation 