Day 16 – What Matters Most
Life is all about love… we live we love…
Because God is love the most important lesson he wants us to learn on earth is how to love …
The bible says, “The whole law is summed up in this one command, Love others as you love yourself.” Galations 5:14 . our reading on this 16th day, reminds us that after we come to see our first purpose, to love and worship God, it’s from this posture we then realize our second purpose; we are being formed for God’s family. We can then turn our gaze to see each other, though imperfect and sometimes impatient and even irritating at times. Our purpose is to learn to love each other here on earth.
This can be a challenge can’t it? Human nature tends to be mighty self centered and self serving, but God has given us an entire lifetime to work on it. We stumble and fall in the process. We get hurt, and we hurt others, but through these things we are learning to love on another.
An interesting point brought out in todays reading is the one about how we are to love everyone, but especially those of the “household of the faith.” This focused special love towards other believers, our brothers and sisters in Christ, is a training ground where we can learn to love one another. Why a special place to learn in the family of God? Because the bible says that “they will know we are Christians by our love…”
This is a place of failure in many churches across the world isn’t it? Demonstrating Christ’s love for us toward each other. Too many times doctrine, rules, regulations, and even the improper wielding of the word of God demonstrates a strict, mean God that is mad at us. This is a terrible misrepresentation of God’s wonderful and amazing love he puts in our hearts to share with his people first, and then outward to the rest of the world.
Life without love is worthless. Paul says in 1 Cor 13:6 that “No matter what I say, what I believe or what I do, I’m bankrupt without love.” This is the truth.
Love cannot be learned in isolation. We have to learn it with people, and people need our time.
Are our relationships really that important to us? Sometime it feels as if things are going so fast, we are so busy, we just don’t have time. We talk about finding time, or making time, it’s as if relationships are just another part of our “to-do” list. It’s our relationships, not the acquisition of more things, that matters most.
The importance of things can be measured by the amount of time we give them, the more time you give to something, the more you reveal it’s importance. You can give without loving, but you cannot love without giving. The essence of love is not what we think or do or provide for others, it’s how much we give of ourselves.
Many men just don’t get this. After all ,we provide things, work hard, solve problems, fix things.. isn’t that enough? What our kids want is not more stuff. What our spouses want is not an accounting of all the things we do for them, so…”be grateful..” The most desired gift of love is not diamonds, roses or candy. It’s our focused attention…being present, listening, your time!
Love means giving up- yielding my preferences, security, money, energy, hobbies and my time for the benefit of another.
Now is the best time to express it. Don’t wait for the right time, because the right time is now. Circumstances change, people die and children grow up. It happens fast and you have no guarantee of tomorrow. The best use of our lives is love. The best expression of love is time. The best time to love is now…