Teach Us to Love

Father,  how good you are. How amazing. How marvelous. How wonderful. How patient. How kind. How meek you are in your power toward us. How long-suffering in your wait with us.

There are moments when I am overwhelmed by the sheer audacity of who you are. When I think about who you are and then I think about me. About us. I am floored. I, with the writer, ask what am I that you are mindful of me?  Who am I that you stop to pay heed to me?

Father, it is not so much significant of who am I as it is Who You Are. It is because of who you are that you bend down to me. You squat down to this needy child because you are a good Father. You put yourself at eye level with me because you are a good and loving Father. I am your child. We are your children. And if we ever understand that you do love us, really love us, then we

might begin to know the mystery of salvation and the kingdom and declare it to the world.

But we have confused love with a myriad of other emotions. Our culture has created a stew pot of emotions that seem like love, perhaps smell like love. But it certainly doesn’t taste like love. We tend to use ingredients like infatuation, lust, fondness, duty, affection and camaraderie. All good ingredients, but they are emotions that slide, shift and shadow. This stew of ours lacks the meat. Love is the meat. Love is not an emotion. It is a decision, Father. You taught us this truth. Love is a deliberate choice that is not just a theory in the mind or an emotion in the heart, but it is a theory put into action regardless.

Teach us to love in this way. Teach us the Chapter 13 kind of love. Not because Paul’s words (directed by your Spirit) are beautiful, idealistic prose, but because that love has feet and hands and a voice. The love of Chapter 13 isn’t fickle, vacillating emotion. Your disciples asked your Son to teach them to pray. Oh, Father, this morning I ask you to teach us to love.

Teach us and then enable us to love because we know who you are and we know who we are. Teach us to love with abandon and without expectation of reward. Teach us that love is always, always making the next right choice in any given circumstance. Teach us the truth that your Son declared, They will know you are my disciples if you love one another. Not because of doctrine. Not because of political correctness. Not because of tradition. Not because of affiliation with a church. Not because of following the law or moral goodness. No, we will be known as followers of Jesus by our love.

Show us how to love then, Father. Show us how to look like Jesus. How to love in a way that people around us, who come in contact with us, recognize Jesus in us.

Amen and amen