I was moved by the following words from First Peter in the Scripture reading in our worship service last Sunday: ""Now that you have purified your souls by your obedience to the truth so that you have genuine mutual love, love one another deeply from the heart." I was reminded of something that Elton Trueblood, the great Quaker writer and thinker, once suggested (and I paraphrase badly now): What the world desperately needs today is small groups of men and women who are dedicated to the experiment of love for one another. Such groups, he suggested, can and must infect the world. There is no greater choice for this challenge, Trueblood concluded, than the church.
Most church goers are well aware of the command of Jesus. It comes to us from the Gospel of John with crystal clarity. "Love one another," our Lord commands. "Even as I have loved you, so you must love one another." My question to you is, how do we do this today? In our busy lives, where we carry on so many commitments, where churches themselves are often living at what Thomas Kelly described as a "frenzied pace of frantic feverishness." How does the busy church and its busy members make room for love to one another--and so fulfill the call of Christ?
2 comments:
I can't help but recall the words of a wise woman in response to your question, Pastor.
"Love is not a feeling, but a decision." - Joyce Meyer
I believe she is not referring to "teenage love", but to love that has matured through Christ.
1 Corinthians 13 defines this love quite clearly, in verse 2:
(2) If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.
We can go through the motions, but if we do not make a conscious decision to love one another and then act on the decision we are only "resounding gongs or clanging cymbals". In other words, we become hollow and without true purpose. In my opinion, hate is not the enemy, but indifference.
I love this. Thank you. I especially appreciate the final line, "Hate is not the enemy, but indifference."
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