"We are supposed to keep telling people they're good and beautiful; they're great and fantastic, Jesus loves them-and eventually they'll believe it. But I haven't seen that work. I think we know the love of God when we ourselves can "do love" much more than when people tell we are lovable. We can always disbelieve the second, but the first is an unexplainable power." (R. Rohr "Radical Grace" p. 120)
Doing love? What would that look like? The first thing that comes to my mind would be any kind of helping someone in need. Perhaps being an open ear to just listen. It may even be as simple as just showing up. Often our doing love seems to involve writing a check, but that allows me some distance from the person or cause, but I suppose it is a start.
How do I know when I'm doing love? I certainly like to do be helpful. I'm willing to get my hands dirty, and yet something seems to be missing.
The more I reflected on that, the clearer it became. There are more often than not motives behind my loving actions. And they are usually tied into wanting to be appreciated. But the truth is that is closer to having someone tell me that I'm loved, than it is to doing love. When I actually help in spite of it being perhaps the last thing I really want to do, when I literally just do it, then that is closer to the doing love that comes from the love of God being seen through me. There won't be a necessary that a boy, after it.
There are of course moments when we need to hear that we are loved, but if that is all that ever happens, we run the risk of it sounding like chicken little saying the sky is falling. Until something really happens within us, and calls us outside of ourselves to do things we didn't think we could do, or perhaps didn't think we'd want to do. Then we're living into the commandment to love.
Blessings,
Ed
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment