Love and Be Loved

34 A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. – John 13:34

We have mistaken love with indifference and non-judgment with loving action. This current age we live in, with over 2,000 years between us and the risen Christ, has distanced us from His ever timely message of grandiose love and lavished acceptance. In its stead, we have placed a higher regard on “live and let live”. This may be because the demands of love are great, we see this at the cross and in the quiet life of Christ before Calvary. Few of us in or outside of Church walls would be able to describe such a love because many of us are starving for what has become such a rarity.

During the Easter season, we reflect on His example as a remembrance of both the demands and the radicalization of love. We strive against our humanity in order to recognize the splendor of the Father’s love for us.

All of us.

As both image bearers and sinners, we must never dare get over such a rich and lasting love. Without qualifier or prerequisite, His love is stubborn, pure, and unexpected.

Perhaps it is not a matter of willfully denying such love. Many of the faith have good intentions. It is simply a matter of staying charged with a Gospel too broad to exhaust all of its wondrous corners and reach. Like any long term love affair, with time, love must be constantly and intentionally provoked and explored lest it fall stagnant and lifeless. In this is a mystery: love is received by us when we love to abundance.