Becoming Loving - Part 1

Focus Scripture

Matthew 22 : 34-40 (NRSV)

When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. ‘Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?’ He said to him, ‘ “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: “You shall love your neighbour as yourself.” On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.’

Daily Byte

Love, it seems, can be a frightening thing. We don’t really trust it, if we’re honest. We think of love as something soft and fickle, something wishy-washy and weak. Clearly Jesus had a different view of love though. He makes it clear that the entire Bible is summed in the twin commands to love God and to love our neighbour as ourselves. This is the only command we’ve been given as followers of Christ! Yet, somehow we would prefer to reduce the Gospel to another set of religious laws, drawing lines to determine who is good and who is bad, who is ‘in’ and who is ‘out’. The law is always the easy way out. Love is much harder and more complex. It requires more of us - more listening, more seeking to understand, more involvement, more time, more energy. But, the law has never been able to heal us or our world. Only love can do that.

How do you feel about the idea that love is our only commandment as Christians? How are you doing in following this one commandment? When are you tempted to replace it with other, simpler laws? How can you allow your worship to reveal God’s love to you more? And how can you learn to express your love for others in your worship gatherings?

Pray As You Go

That’s it, Jesus? Seriously?
Only love? No other command;
no other law?
Nothing else required?

You must know something about love that we don’t, Jesus;
You trust it so much more than we do,
you believe its power so completely;
how else could you have allowed it to drive you to the cross?

Teach me to trust love the way you do, Jesus,
to open my heart to your love,
and to learn to speak and act and think in love as you do;
Give me the courage to make the quest for love,
an essential guiding principle of my life.

Amen.

Today’s devotion is taken from Rev John van de Laar’s outstanding book ‘The Hour That Changes Everything: How worship forms us into the people God wants us to be.’ Used with permission

To order copies of this book and for other superb worship resources visit http://www.sacredise.com