Faith and Love

Love is something that flows from one being to another.  It is expressed from the one communicating love and received by the one for whom it is intended.  Others who witness love can't help being positively impacted by its allure.   

Love draws us in.

Love is always for our good.

Love always builds up and never tears down.

Love can't be manufactured - it either exists or it doesn't. 

In this second week of Advent, focusing on Faith and Love, I was traveling behind a vehicle that was decorated with two bumper stickers: 

My first thought was that we can coexist without loving or understanding one another, with a posture of tolerance, rather than love.    

We can believe in love, and not be loving.  

We can believe in peace, without being peacemakers.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.  It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.  It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.  1 CORINTHIANS 13:4-8a

Jesus embodies love and peace, bringing them into the world. 

God is love.  1 John 4:16

In the same way, God calls his people to be loving.  

Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.  Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.  This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him.  This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.  Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.  No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.  1 JOHN :7-12

  

The journey of Advent points us to Jesus, who entered this broken world to bring love and peace.  More than merely coexisting, or believing in love and peace, Jesus invites us to love others as ourselves because of the love we've received from God.  And, having experienced the reconciling nature of God, God calls us to be peacemakers. 

Love always enters in for the good of another!

People throughout the world are hurting in a variety of ways -  lonely, hungry, displaced, brokenhearted, desperate, angry... the list is long.  Imagine what love does in each of these situations...  Love says "you are not alone and I won't abandon you.  I'll share what I have and we'll figure this out together."  Love never says "it's someone else's problem."  

Through faith, the kind of redeeming love and peace

necessary to heal the strife in this world is possible.