Whatever Happened to Love?
Remember, not too many years ago,
when people were not afraid to talk about love? The Beatles
sang, "All You Need is Love." The best movie was, "Love Story."
Artists used four building blocks to spell out, "L-O-V-E" and it was
an image that captured people's imagination--the building blocks of
love. Love was part of our daily dialogue and in our shared
imagination. Then love disappeared. People stopped talking about it
in public. The world became too sophisticated, or too cynical, or
too focused on other things. We forgot about love.
But what if there was a Love that
did not forget about us? What if there is a Love that remembers,
dreams and quietly goes about loving us? What if now is our time to
remember, reassert and recapture just how central Love is in our
lives?
Our remembering would include
letting the Scripture passages about love flow over us:
"God is love." "Love hopes all things, believes all things, endures
all things." "Perfect love casts out fear." "Whoever loves is born
of God and knows God." "Whoever loves abides in God and God
abides in them." "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul,
strength and mind." "Follow love." "Love never ends." "Love your
neighbor as yourself." "Love your enemies." "God's steadfast love
endures forever." "Faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the
greatest of these is love." "If we love one another, God lives in
us, and God's love is perfected in us." "Make love your goal."
One of my former classmates has
written a great book titled, "The Priority of Love" (Timothy Jackson
is his name, he's a professor at Emory University.) His book and the
title itself say what I believe: its time to make love a priority.
All this love talk has made me stop and think: I really have not
been loving enough in my life. I could be a more loving pastor,
father, husband, friend. I could be a more loving disciple of Jesus
Christ. Rather than wallow in my guilt and inadequacy, I want to
focus on God's love, which forgives, renews, reorients and
rejuvenates. I want to grow in God's love. I'd like to invite you to
join me in the journey.
We are at an historic moment in
the life of Westminster. When the sanctuary reopens this autumn, we
begin a new chapter in the life of this church. What could be more
central for us to focus on at this time than the core of our faith:
the love of God in Jesus Christ.
Love. It is the nature of God.
In the coming month, I invite you
to pray about this, so that we can be ready together to make love
our goal.
