CHRISTIAN
LOVE
Love is the best of all gifts. God’s love is unconditional. All of
life and creation reflects God’s love. It spreads light onto the darken earth
and it creates joy within human lifelessness. It gives reason for hoping and
dreams for the future.
The simple fact that we all are uniquely a part of God’s creation
verifies to me that we are lovable. Therefore, let us allow God’s love to
become Christian love.
Christian love is God’s love moving through us and towards others.
We can place value and attention onto the needs of others. We can listen, care,
share, understand and forgive. Christian love is not our own self-interest love
(for it does not belong to our own egotistical needs) – IT IS COMMITMENT born
of God’s commitment. It is personal sacrifice similar to the sacrifice of Christ
on the cross.
Christian love comes from the Spirit – IT IS “AGAPE” (it is pure).
This love strengthens our individuality, our families, our churches and all of
our world. This love enables us to face all of our human evils and overcome
them. It builds, it does not destroy. It gives, it does not take. It soothes,
it does not cause suffering. It forms friendships as it dissolves our hatreds.
Because God created it and not us, it is all-powerful and it is eternal.
But, where is this Christian love (today) within our lives? Where
is the path that our Lord has set out for us? We can find it from within our
hearts but also from within THE STRANGER (the person that we do not
understand). Christian love is in many places, it is there in our schools, on
our jobs, within the mall and throughout every home (if we choose to see it).
Let us welcome this love without conditions that divide. Let us stop
insinuating that some people deserve our love while others do not. Let us stop
giving the message of “We must be alike, to be truly accepted”.
Let us love people within our families and within our lives
without building walls. Let us accept people because of their unique spiritual
experiences (and not filter their lives through any of our “Right” or “Wrong”
attitudes). Let us understand the individual differences between us as unique
(but beautiful) flowers within God’s garden of love.
If God’s kingdom is to be here on earth, it has to be based on a
diverse need for God from all of humanity (not on a consensus of self-interest
from certain people). We have to stand up and support the love from people
around us (those that we know and those that we do not know). Then, we can
truly love our neighbor as ourselves. We must find God’s love, for it is behind
the actions of people we see and it is within our loving concerns towards
others. As we give love, we will receive it.
D.
Crone
(Prayer of Equality)
Oh Lord:
May we see the needs of others
like our own …
May we see
our outer actions
like our inner love …
May we see the poor
like the rich …
May we see women
like all men should be …
May we see all people
with
the same love
Then we will see God’s kingdom
here on earth. AMEN
D. Crone
QUESTIONS:
1 - What prevents you from showing “Christian Love all the time”?
- Is it pride? … Ego? … Desiring your way only? … Rigid
attitudes of rights & wrongs?
2 - Does self-sacrifice have anything to do with “Christian Love”?
3 – How can you love someone who does not like you? … Or that
mistreats you? … Or judges you? Does asking God to love that person help to
build up your soul?
4 – If there is intellectual love, moral love, spiritual love,
unconditional love, physical love, brotherly love, universal love and love for
objects or things – what kind of love does God give us? … Can it be all the
above since God is all inclusive?
5 – Love can be on several different levels but what happens when
it is broken into parts (that can be separated from love itself)? … Can sex be
separated from love? … Can dignity be separated from love? … Can understanding
or consideration be separated from love?
… Can our hearts become objects of exploitation when love is divided
up into individual parts separated from Christian Love itself?
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