As I have loved you
How very good and pleasant it is
When kindred live together in unity! Psalm 133:1
Read John 15:9—17
In the Christian life the grammar of relationships is love. The verb underlying all verbs is love. Whatever other verb I need to use to describe my actions, that must be only a particular form of love. It is a different language from my surrounding culture. My surrounding culture operates on a verb — what is the verb that best expresses ‘please myself’? So my culture is engaged in a different conversation. Others may see the centrality of love as in some ways admirable, even if hard to truly grasp. But I, as long as I am a Christian, will need to spend my life ready for new discoveries. Because, of course, if I am to love as God loves me — I cannot do that! This must always be an invitation. Love like this can only be an invitation to keep growing, to keep joyfully attending to others and responding to others. It will have to involve new convictions about myself, new discoveries about others, deeper repentance. There will be repentance again and again as I see myself as I am. And great, unexpected surprises. This life of love will have me growing, endlessly. In the end the love of love will issue in a love of life.
Dear, gracious Father, when first I hear Jesus speak love, the given-away life, I fear. I fear for myself. I fear that I shall be worn out, lost to my own loves and passions, thin and given away and unfulfilled. Yet you live in love and as love. So I see you inviting me to be with you, and in you I can begin to see my life in joyful relationship, growing into someone I have never yet quite been. Growing in partnership with you. Enriched by others, by actually knowing others in a way that is concealed from me until I love them. Let me not fear to live in love. Let me find you at a deeper level, which can be found only in obedience. Let me leave myself in order to find you.