"This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us." –The Gospel of Luke
"Truth is the highest expression of love. A lot of times I won't say something to folks because I don't want to hurt them and I want to be liked. Whenever I do that, I try to convince myself that I'm practicing love. But I delude myself. Love looks you straight in the eye and speaks truth. When we fail to do that, it's generally because we value personal comfort more that another's growth." –Philip Gulley, Hometown Reflections
"We are most alive when we're in love." –John Updike
Being in love isn't the same anymore. We've remade love, having made love into something it isn't. Making love, isn't. Being in love, isn't. We've lost ourselves accordingly. And if God is love, is it any wonder we've lost him too?
I think our dearly departed John had it right: we are most alive when we're in love. But being in love isn't feeling romantic about someone. It's being in Christ. And Christ in us. We love because he first loved us. How simple it once was. We only came to life because of love. And at some time in most our lives, that simple truth is enough.
And as Luke says, when we love others, we love God. But as Philip says, it isn't easy. We sabotage it. To be "in love" and fully alive, we have to learn how to love others like it's our job. For writers, that's writing and sharing the deepest parts and never backing down when it gets uncomfortable.
Make that your goal next time you sit down to write. Work at truly loving others through your words, through your characters. Because through them, you're loving the One who made them.
Good word, Mick.
Love isn’t comfy cozy, candlelight, squishy, heart-flutters.
It’s dying on a cross, crucified. It’s telling the truth with honest motive.
It’s dying to self.
It’s pure.
Coming only through Him, the One.
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no records of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.
These scriptures that are found in I Corinthians Chapter 13 are the foundation for our love walk. But as conduits of the love of God we have a commission to relay those truths to a world that is not patient, is not kind. A world that exalts ‘self’ and wallows in stubborness and pride and is drowning in grief.
How can we relay the love of God to the unlovable? To the selfish? To the liar and to the thief?
As a writer I have taken the opportunity of tapping into my boundless imagination and I create characters that I can use to speak to the seeker in all of us. I believe that any character can be an example of either how we should be living our lives, or as an example of how we should not be living our lives. Both have extreme merit when trying to reach a lost or seeking soul. It’s what we as writers do with these characters that makes all of the difference.
If I have a character that is making all of the right choices, and is reaching out to a lost and dying world then I have a character that is going to make a positive impact. If I have a character that is seemingly making all of the right choices, and yet has no compassion or allows for no mercy, then that character is not going to make a positive impact because he is only serving himself.
On the other hand, if I have a character that is making poor choices and is a mess, and yet I allow that character to experience love and forgiveness and the merciful grace of God then even though that character is seemingly rough, that character can paint a portrait of grace like no other when the light of God’s love is reflected in the life that has been redeemed.
It’s up to us as writers to flavor our words with the love and the mercy of God.
Thanks for sharing this word. I’ve been aware lately of how much God loved us while we were enemies and rotten. And how He expects us to even love our enemies!
Totally impossible in my own strength, that is for sure. But through His strength He enables me to love others the same way He loves me. That is an amazing truth I can’t quite grasp.
I loved the last paragraph of your post:
Make that your goal next time you sit down to write. Work at truly loving others through your words, through your characters. Because through them, you’re loving the One who made them.
Thanks for the good word!