BLOG # 71 THE MORE WE LOVE THE MORE WE GIVE

BLOG #71 THE MORE WE LOVE THE MORE WE GIVE From the ordinary person who lives next door or across the road , to the wisest professor of human psychology at Harvard or Columbia Universities, all of us know something about love, in love experienced, or in sin betrayed. And throughout the Bible we see the importance of love in all of our life. Love is shown as lessening the weight of the human burdens we have to bear. When Jacob served seven years to obtain Rachel as his wife the book of Genesis tells us that the seven years seemed like a few days because of the greatness of his love. The Hebrew prophets Amos Micah and Zachariah tell us to love what is good, to love mercy, to love truth, and to love peace. We are constantly taught and encouraged to love God and to love one another. Paul said that of the three virtues of faith hope and love, love is the greatest. The Apostle John says that God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God and God in him. All the words of the prophets, the law, and the commandments are summed up in the simple command to love God above all and our neighbor as we love ourselves. Perhaps the closest to a direct definition of love in the Bible is from Jesus: No greater love than this can a man have than that he lay down his life for a friend. In our every quest for a definition of love, from a reflection upon our own experience, from consultation with married couples, from study of books on human psychology, from a survey of the Bible, it seems we could come up with no more perfect a definition of love than to say to love means to give, and the more we love the more we give. For this reason Jesus could say there is no greater love possible for a person than to give one's life, for in giving our life we have no more to give. Whether the love we speak of is the love of a friend for a friend, a wife for a husband, parents for children, a man for his country, brothers and sisters for one another, believers for their God, or God for His people, the definition is the same, to love means to give, the more we love the more we give. Kindness, patience, time, forgiveness, affection,rings and roses, hugs and kisses, prayer, are all gifts that lovers give to one another to establish their love and to deepen it. Nothing is as important in all our lives as love. "There is no greater love than this, than that someone would lay down one's life for a friend". Then Jesus lay down His life for us in obedience to the Father's love as a sign and an expression of the Father's love for us and for all creation. Father, help us understand, appreciate, and experience Your love ever more perfectly and generously as the days of our life on earth go on until that instant when we give it all in the total unconditional everlasting gift of death.