Tuesday, November 27, 2018

Marks of Methodism: Love Others

When I was younger, one of my favorite books was Love You Forever by Robert S. Munsch. The story is told about a mother’s unconditional and unending love for her son, through his two year old trials to his adult antics. No matter what her son did, she rocked him and sang a song: “I’ll love you forever, I’ll like you for always, as long as I’m living, my baby you’ll be.” In the end of the book, as the mother is dying the roles are reversed; the son holds her and sings her song back to the old woman. “I’ll love you forever, I’ll like you forever, as long as I’m living, my mommy you’ll be.”

Reflecting back over the years on why I liked this book so much, I’ve realized that there is something pure about how this book describes love. In a culture that often substitutes the word “love” for “like”, this book showed what love is. What love looks like, even in the difficult times. This is not an “I love pizza” type of situation. This book demonstrated what the type of love in today’s scripture passage is - agape - the type of love that gives without expecting anything in return, sacrificial love at its best. The type of love that stands as a reminder that all things are rooted in love, find their beginning in love, are perfected in love, and are returned in love. In other words, the hard type of love. 

The questions for us, as followers of Christ, are:
how are we demonstrating God's love 
and to whom are we we showing this love?
Because if its just to folks who are like us or who like us, then we've missed the point. 
How are we showing, with our words and actions, the love of the Savior?

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