How do I love Thee?

by Elizabeth Stewart

Division and strife abounds everywhere we look.  We see it in the headlines, we see it in our Facebook and Twitter feeds, we see it in politics, sports and in our churches.  It's obvious that we are finding it next to impossible to love one another well.  

When I was a young wife and mama, long before podcasts and audio book apps,  there was a Christian radio station that used to have an afternoon program in which they would read a book aloud.  I vividly remember hearing some author of some long ago forgotten book title state that human love is a limited resource, it eventually runs out.  The author then went on to use marriage as an example, sharing that it's very common to wake up one day to find that loving feeling gone.  The author then when on to say that we need to be plugged in to a source of limitless love, which is the unconditional love of God.

Let's face it, it's sometimes hard to even love the people under our own roof well.  No wonder we find it next to impossible to love someone who's political views are different than ours, who's skin color and/or culture is different than ours,  who's life experience is different than ours, who's belief system is different than ours.  No amount of lecturing, finger pointing, guilting or shaming is an effective motivation for us to love others better.  We can know that we should love our neighbor better, but knowing we should and being able to genuinely love them are worlds apart.  In my opinion, it's because we are starting in the wrong place.  If we start by trying harder to love others as ourselves, I believe it is an exercise in futility.  We must first plug into the source of unconditional love.  What if instead of trying to love others better, we got to know God and to grow in wholehearted love for Him. What if we actually asked Him, the source of unconditional love, to help us to know and to love Him with our all, until we became so filled up with our love for God and His love for us that loving others wasn't something we had to try harder to do. What if the love we had for God and His overwhelming love for us, spilled out of us, overflowing from us to others.  Just imagine what a difference that would make in our homes, in our neighborhood, and in our hurting world.

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