The Good News
   LOVE...it conjures warm fuzzy feelings...it has been the subject of romances until it is hard to differentiate what it is from romantic carries...it has been misappropriated at times and named as something it is not...and it also happens to be the most powerful force on earth. It is God...if we are to hear 1 John 4 7 & 8 as truth. And it is this notion of God=love/love=God that has captured my attention of late. What does it mean if this is true when we say "I love you" and actually mean it. Might it not just mean that there is something about God expressing himself in the world, in which case we not only are conduits of God to another, but we even directly experience God first hand in the exchange. Ideas that quite frankly make me speechless in awe and wonder when I really spend time with them.

 

   I have come to notice in myself a slowness to love...almost a hesitation of reserved-ness that I think God is finding ways to break through the more I love spend time contemplating what is means that God IS love. I don't really know where this will take me, but I sense an expansive freedom in what it means to be a person, a husband, a father, a pastor, Christian even. Perhaps this is what Christ was driving at when he summarized all the commandments as "love God" and "love others as you do yourself." I wonder today if sometimes we as church (that is all Christians) spend more time worrying more about the forms of being a church, styles, types,, ect. more than we really spend time being and falling in love and thereby experiencing God and becoming conduit's for his grace, mercy, and unconditional acceptance with those around us.

 

   These are my thoughts for today...but I've found more significantly are my prayers right now. I've increasingly found myself comfortable with praying the simplest of prayers..."God increase my capacity to love." And what has been amazing is the way that God is finding ways of bringing this prayer to fruition. Perhaps some of you will find this a helpful first step to exploring your own thoughts and aspirations to dive more deeply into the love of God...like I said, I suspect it is in these deep pools of overflowing love that we will come to a whole new understanding of just about everything. May the peace of God's love....that is God himself overflow in you.

 

Peace,

 

Pastor Eric