Where is All the Love?

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I have been thinking a lot about love lately. Not romantic love between a husband and wife, but the kind of love others show each other and the kind God shows us. I have also been hearing a lot about love during this Christmas season. Sure, we are supposed to love others at Christmas time, but why wait until then? Why do people feel the need to show love then, but not all year long?

Sometimes I get so disappointed especially in Christians. Aren’t Christians supposed to show love to others? Especially showing God’s love through their love? I will be honest. I don’t see it. Ok maybe I do see it, but I feel it’s rare. More rare than it should be. Why aren’t we (and yes I say “we” because I am including myself in this) able to show love to others all the time no matter what we are feeling or no matter what we are doing?

It seems that so many are selfish. We are too busy to care, too busy to help, too busy to love. Or maybe it’s that we have our “group” that we show love to, but no one else. Maybe you shower love upon your friends and upon those who are easy to love, but stepping out of your comfort zone to try and love someone else, someone who may be unloveable or maybe who needs it more than anything else? That is just not on your list.

It’s too hard. Someone else will do it. Maybe later. Those are the excuses I see.

Sometimes I feel like I try so hard to love. I try to reach out, I care and I show I care. I try to keep up with as many people as I can to remember what is happening in their lives and to ask what is going on and how I can help. But I sometimes feel like it’s in vain. Sometimes those same people don’t do the same. And I get discouraged. It’s not that I love so that I can get love back, but when I put all my energy into trying to love, and get nothing back it’s disappointing.

You know what’s not disappointing? Do you know Whose love will never discourage me? God’s love. It is perfect. There is nothing like it in all the world. I am so grateful I still have that at the end of a long day or at the beginning of a new one.

I had all these thoughts most recently, and then last night I read an excerpt by Max Lucado from his book, Max on Life: Answers and Insights to Your Most Important Questions. It was a perfect piece for my thoughts about love. I wanted to share it with you.

Someone asked Max Lucado:

“I’ve been disappointed so many times by  human love, and I think this has given me a faulty view of God’s love. Can you help me understand how His love is different from human love?

And this was his reply:

• “Human love is convenient. It suits the needs of the person at the time and works into his schedule.
• God’s love is eternal. You are always on God’s itinnerary. Come and go as you wish, but he’s always there.
• Human love is limited. It can love only as much as it wants to give.
• God’s love is unlimited. He has ample amounts of love and even uses words like abundant when talking about pouring out his love on people.
• Human love is emotional. Feelings dominate a human’s landscape. We feel as though we’re in love , or we don’t feel as through we’re in love. Hormones, sleeplessness, worry, past hurts, Mexican food- all complicate these emotions.
• God’s love is committed. While God has feelings for us, his feelings don’t dictate his love. His Love is a deeper and more secure love than the fluctuating Ferris wheel of feeling.
• Human love is selfish. It must suit our needs and be there for us. To love, we must be loved.
• God’s love is unselfish. In fact, if you never love God he will still love you. Your love has no bearing on the amount of love he lavishes on you.

One thing human love has going for it is that you can see it- in the twinkling of your father’s eye, in the smile of a spouse, in the joy of your children’s voices.

God’s love is just as real but not as tangible. We will see it, in time and for eternity, as we gaze at the face of God and his Son, jesus Christ, while we stand in his presence in heaven.

Out goals as Christians should be to express God’s love in our human relationships so people will never make the statement you MADE. We should all have someone in out lives on whom we can look back and say, ‘I saw God’s love in that person.'”

So powerful. I hope that someone can say that about me. What about you?

 

God’s Love Toward us:

• Jeremiah 31:3 “The LORD hath appeared of old unto me, saying, Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee.“

• Romans 8:38-39 “For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.“

• Ephesians 5:2 “And walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweetsmelling savour.“

Loving Others:

• Mark 12:31 “…Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.”

• John 13:34-35 “A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.”

• John 15:13 “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”

• Romans 12:10 “Be kindly affectioned one to another with brotherly love; in honour preferring one another.”

• Romans 13: 8-9 “Owe no man any thing, but to love one another: for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law. Love worketh no ill to his neighbour: therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.”

• Galatians 5:14 “For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this; Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.”

• Ephesians 4:2 “With all lowliness and meekness, with longsuffering, forbearing one another in love.“

• I Peter 1:22 “Seeing ye have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit unto unfeigned love of the brethren, see that ye love one another with a pure heart fervently.“

• I John 3:11 “For this is the message that ye heard from the beginning, that we should love one another.”

• I John 4: 7-8 “Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.”

• I John 4:10-12 “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another. No man hath seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us.”

• I John 4:21 “And this commandment have we from him, That he who loveth God love his brother also.”