Category: Love

Loving as Jesus loves--a challenge

9/21/2024

I keep returning to love, the fundamental truth of my Christian faith.  "God loves everyone" This includes people I don't like and don't agree with, with women who birth children and women who don't, with people who refer to themselves as 'they' instead of 'he' or 'she'. This includes everyone, even you, even me.
I don't intend this blog entry to be a political comment, but the politics that currently surround us is encouraging me define my faith and the actions I should take. Thus, as someone who tries to follow Jesus, I am intrigued with Jesus response in Matthew's gospel  (22: 36-40)  to the lawyer  who asked:
     "Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?"  He said to him, '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.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets."
     In Mark's gospel (12: 28-34) a scribe asks the same question. Jesus' response is similar, but ends with this:  "You are not far from the kingdom of God."
     What more do we have to do than love God and love neighbor as self? Fr. Thomas Keating suggests:
      "A new commandment characterizes the Christian faith which carries the insight of the scribe a step further. It is to love one another as Jesus has loved us….The new commandment is to accept others unconditionally: that is to say, without the least wish to change then."
       Much to pray on!!

Fruit of the Spirit #1 LOVE

6/5/2024

The Fruit of the Spirit:  love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, patience, gentleness, and self-control (Galatians 5:22-23). We know them; some of us can repeat them from memory. Most mornings I go over the list as part of my prayer time.
   For the next nine postings on my blog, cottagebythesea.net, I plan to share ways that each fruit supports my longing for silence, solitude, and simplicity. On this prayerdiary.net blog I'll offer a few thoughts about how each fruit resonates with me as a Christian, as someone who is trying to follow Jesus.

# 1 Love
Jesus said to him, ‘“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and love your neighbor as yourself.” Matthew 22:37.
     This  message of love is in all three synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke; a similar one is in John's  Gospel: "A new commandment that I give you, that you love one another…." John 13:34.
      And then there is this:
    "But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust." Matt. 5:44-45.
        Jesus' message to love everyone is the message. That's it! His preaching, parables, and actions are all built upon the commandment to love God, and  love your neighbor as yourself. I know this and I know that I can't live up to the mark; I forget, I avoid, I make exceptions, I make excuses. I am human. God knows this; God doesn't expect perfection; God wants me to do the best I can. The good news is that as a Christian, I can repent and ask for forgiveness. God's grace and God's mercy is always there.

Love, the prime ingredient

2/15/2023

I’ve been thinking these days that the only way of being that saves anything or anyone is love. Love is a stand-alone. It has no opposite. I can’t love and hate at the same time. I must chose one.
Debate about faith and works continues, but what speaks to me is not a dialectic between the two, but the primacy of love in each. Faith and works are two positives. Theologically I may chose the primacy of one over the other, but in living my life, love is the prime ingredient in both.

Start with love, respond in love, and keep love in sight

5/23/2020

Every day I feel more gratitude for my faith. How could I possible manage this pandemic if I had to count on myself and others to help get through this? (And I don’t have immediate problems.) How easy it is to blame others for what has gone wrong, for any downward mood springs, and for what might happen next! Or, to take credit when things go my way! Without God, this is where I invariably I go: my will be done, which is sometimes loving, but always led by the ego.
I won’t go into any theological discussion about God. What I know and have come to believe is that whatever we are dealt in life gives us the opportunity to start with love, respond in love, and keep love always as the goal. This involves mind, body, and spirit.
The mind helps us remember and think about love; the body can lead us to do loving acts; the spirit unites the two. It is through the spirit that I feel God is presence, leading me toward Thy will be done, not my will,

Love or fear--a choice we can make~

4/4/2020

In the past few days I’ve realized that I’ve allowed this pandemic to take over very being. Watching the news was catapulting me into perpetual fear and diminishing by prayer time. This isn’t the first time I’ve allowed people or situations (read the devil) to be my god, nor the first time I’ve stepped back to let God back in to be the Good News in my life.
     This time, however, feels exponentially different, more poignant. In ways none of us can avoid, God is calling us to move from fear to love. Hmm, the only sensible choice, a choice that I believe we have. Why would we ever choose fear over love?
     Today in Around the Year with Emmet Fox, I read: Really there are only two feelings that a human being can have, namely love and fear….the great difference between the two feelings is that love is always creative, and fear is always destructive.
      Dwelling on the news fills me with fear: I know it is destructive—my mind/body/spirit tell me so. Prayer fills me with love: I know it is creative—my mind/body/spirit tells me so.
     What if everyone in the world prayed? What if everyone in the world chose love? Love begets love. Love blots out fear.

Faith, HOPE, love

3/18/2019

The other day a friend told me he had little hope. In reflecting on our conversation, I realize that he has more hope for world peace than for his own inner peace. He works for justice and peace, but he can’t let go the wrongs that happened to him as a child.
     Faith, hope, and love. He is stuck on hope, the middle one, which is more active and comprehensible than faith. Can we have hope without faith? Probably not, because without faith, hope just floats about as a capricious whim.
    Love is the easiest to grasp. I love my family, my home, and my upcoming trip to Italy. But love without faith is also capricious, depending on how other people, material possessions, and situations effect me at a given moment. It is easy to grasp moments of hope and love when things are going well. But what about those times of distress, when they are overpowered by despair and fear?
    I want to tell my friend that if he pursues faith, hope and unconditional love will follow. But I can’t tell him how, other than to suggest what I and others have found helpful. The best I can do is listen to him and pray for him. Pray for God’s light and peace to shine on, through, and with him, whatever that might mean to him. I don’t know the details of his situation; in fact they can get in the way of my prayer. Let go, let God, is enough.

Send love!

12/2/2018

I’m back in Florence, walking around with God. My commitment to this is strong, which means that I am remembering more often to feel God’s presence, not just when I visit a church or walk the streets, but as I encounter people living their lives and expressing joys and concerns.
     My purpose simple: live only in, by, through, and with love. This means no judgments, other than to notice that someone is expressing joy or concern. If I observe joy, I express gratitude. If I observe what appears as sadness or anger, I send God’s peace.
    Case in point! A bit ago, a boy (age eight ?) sat down in this café with his parents and grandmother. He appeared distressed and started pouting and crying. He was not happy, nor were the adults happy with him. I need not analyze or explain the situation further.
     My prayer challenge is simple: send love. Further judgments on my part diminish the power of prayer.

Power of love~

10/11/2018

Richard Rohr offers the words of The Cloud of Unknowing in his meditation today.cac.org/sign-up/

     Look. Every rational creature, every person, and every angel has two main strengths: the power to know and the power to love. God made both of these, but [God is] not knowable through the first one. To the power of love, however, [God] is entirely known, because a loving soul is open to receive God’s abundance. . . . [God’s] very nature makes love endless and miraculous. God will never stop loving us. Consider this truth, and, if by grace you can make love your own, do. For the experience is eternal joy; its absence is unending suffering.

     I long always to say ‘Yes’ to this message of love but I fail whenever I feel justified in placing restrictions on that love. “I will love everyone except ______, because, after all, I know he/she is really bad.”
    And yet I know better. Jesus’ message is to love unconditionally. The Gospels are replete with him telling us to love everyone, even our enemies. Hard to do, and yet the message that God shows no partiality, shows me how radical God is requiring me to be. Jesus definitely turns the world upside down with this one. Unless I return to the love idea I tell myself, I can’t do it. But, wait, I can do it, one moment, one situation,, one person at a time. When I do, I experience the Cloud’s invitation to eternal joy.

Faithful America

8/4/2018

I receive emails from “Faithful America”, www.faithfulamerica.org and organization committed to give voice to Christian love in the political arena; to voice inclusivity, to speak loud and clear that God loves EVERYONE, to proclaim Jesus’ message of love not fear not. It speaks a liberal point of view to counter a conservative message.
As a Christian, I am grateful for this voice out there on the internet: to feed the poor, speak kindly, not with anger, don’t laugh at people, honor the due process in our land of law (don’t say ‘lock her up’).
We Christians must do our prayerful best to stay positive and loving in the current political climate. It is always a challenge but because we know and believe that we are not our own savior, we have an inkling of a chance to show a different way of living and being in the world.

Here’s the latest post.
Dear Faithful America member,
Criminal indictments and headline news have revealed that the National Prayer Breakfast is an "international influence-peddling bazaar." What masquerades as a religious event has long been chock full of lobbyists representing foreign dictators and oligarchs looking for a chance to rub elbows with U.S. leaders.
Maria Butina, an alleged Russian intelligence operative, has been charged with criminal conspiracy for collaborating with National Prayer Breakfast organizers in 2016 and 2017 in order to establish a back channel of communication between Russian and American officials.
From its inception, the breakfast has been organized by a secretive network of conservative Christian leaders known as “the Fellowship” or “the Family,” who admire Jesus as a “strongman” and extol “totalitarianism for Christ.” The event’s official legitimacy comes not from any church or denomination, but from the bipartisan members of Congress who chair it each year.
Senators Chris Coons (D-Delaware) and James Lankford (R-Oklahoma) are next year's chairs. Now that the National Prayer Breakfast has been exposed for what it is, they must resign.

The Upper Room's Thought for the Day

7/29/2017

     Here is today’s Thought for the Day offered in The Upper Room, (www.upperroom.org) a daily devotional written and read by people around the world: “How can I share God’s unconditional love with others?”
     This idea of sharing God’s unconditional love brought me up short. After all, I don’t talk about God with others. And yet, isn’t that one of the guiding principles of the Christian faith? To show God’s love?
       Any sermonizing or pontificating on my part would turn people away, but being positive shows love, and love is from God. Positive comments are just that; they don’t include any ‘buts’ so just eliminate them. Here are a few.
* What a lovely day (but it is too humid).
* I love chicken cooked on the grill (but it needs constant attention).
* The Red Sox are leading the league (but they aren’t hitting consistently).
         I’m not suggesting we never include these buts in our conversations, but not when we want to spread God’s unconditional love.