The Most Excellent Way

(Just as a side note, this has been sitting on my computer since the end of February...didn’t’ realize I never posted it until today!)

I have been thinking a lot about love recently. It didn’t help that grocery stores and Kay commercials had been reminding me almost daily that Valentine’s Day was only just around the corner…though somehow that elusive corner starts presenting itself the day after New Years. Funny. But that’s not actually what has me thinking about love. Axis has. I spent the last 3 weeks speaking in Canada, Washington, and Seattle, and at the end of every venue we do, I get to talk about this concept of love, and what if that’s really what it’s all about.

In one of our Axis presentations we look at the Jewish tradition of the “Shema” which is found in Deuteronomy chapter 6 and it reads as, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.” According to the Talmud, (Jewish law), as soon as a child is able to speak he is taught to say the Shema once in the morning and then again at night. So it’s fair to assume that Jesus, growing up in the Jewish home that he did, would also have had to learn this himself. It’s interesting to note that Jesus references the Shema early on in his ministry when asked which is the greatest out of all 613 commandments found in the Old Testament. Jesus’ answer to the question is this, “The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 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: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.” (Mark 12). So here we have the Son of God, saying that of all the commandments, the greatest centers around this idea of love: loving God and loving others. It would follow then that I should be learning to do everything in love.

But am I? Is love at the center of why I do, what I do, and how I do it? The Apostle Paul says in his 2^nd letter to the church in Corinth that we should be compelled by the love of Christ. This is to be our motivation. I have to ask myself, is this true of me? Sometimes it’s just easier not to ask that question…

I learned a lot about love this past trip. While we were in Canada, I happened to mention to the principal of the school we were speaking at that on my bucket list was to try curling. Now for clarification, my bucket list is not what one might term “practical”. Mostly it’s made up of silly wishes that I’ve accumulated over 24 years of existence. I knew that being in Canada, there was probably ample opportunity to experience the sport that has intrigued me for many winter Olympics. Just a side comment in a conversation, nothing more, and yet the next day I found out that she scheduled an outing with the High School students to…you guessed it…a curling rink. I learned two things during that hour curling: 1) even when you learn how to play, it’s still a confusing sport and 2) that this was a picture of love: taking another’ simple wish and doing whatever it takes to make it come true. They bought us shoes, taught us how to play, and all because of an insignificant bucket list. And we were there to love on them! To encourage and bless them! And here I was on the receiving end of such lavish love. It is incredibly humbling.

Love is messy. It runs over the broken edges and cracked places of our lives. As the hymnist wrote,

What wondrous love is this, O my soul, O my soul!

What wondrous love is this, O my soul!

What wondrous love is this

That caused the Lord of bliss

To bear the dreadful curse for my soul, for my soul,

To bear the dreadful curse for my soul!

This is the love that is to compel us to love our God and to love others as ourselves. I confess that I cannot even begin to grasp the depth of so great a love let alone hope that my own comes even close to it. “Now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love” (1 Corinthians 13). As I have experienced the reckless, raging fury that they call the love of God, and as I have received lavish love from others, my heart longs to love in the same way. Reckless, lavish love. For love is the most excellent way.