 |
| Happy Valentine's Day!!!Love. |
"And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.' "The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” Mark 12:30-31
This morning I was thinking about this command. What if I truly loved God with all that I have and I loved my neighbor as myself? I'm pretty sure this would solve all the world's problems. There would be no world hunger, racism would end, red-head awesomeness would be recognized, there would be no homeless, candy and chocolate would be calorie-free, jails would be empty, there would be no children without homes, basically, there would be no sin. So maybe not all those are true, but, considering we are all flawed and sinful, why did Jesus give us a command that He knew we couldn't fully follow?
Well, first, I think that's because it reveals our need for Him. If we could do this "life" thing so great on our own and save ourselves, then why would we need Him? Secondly, my thought is that Jesus tends to take everything to the next level. He doesn't just give you a set of rules, He helps you think of the bigger picture. God's been there and done that. He gave the Israelites a list of rules to follow, but that got out of hand. It became more about the rules and less about the reason for the rules.
The Israelites missed the bigger picture. So, God tries to help us out and reveal the big picture through Jesus. We all know how the Jews received Jesus' message, we just don't realize we do the same thing. God has given us rules to help us, but He's also explained things to us and showed us the big picture through this passage. We still miss it. We still refuse to set aside our desires, our plans, ourselves. We don't truly love others because it might make our life inconvenient. We don't love others nearly as much as we love ourselves. If that's the second commandment and we aren't succeeding you can pretty much guess we aren't doing that great at the first commandment either.
So, where does that leave us? We can whine and complain, "What's the point? We aren't gonna get this right anyway." Let's start with this idea. How many of us would say trying to love like Jesus loved us is pointless? We should just give up and do what we want. Even your standard "moral" person that has no official interest in God sees value in loving and caring for others. Then you have the other side of the coin. Love God first, love others as yourself. Will we fail at this? Yes, sometimes, but we will know God on a deeper level and He will be able to use us to love others in ways we never thought possible.
Let's try it! I mean, it is Valentine's Day.
Comments