How Much Is Enough?

It's not enough to know that God loves us with an unrelenting, unreasonable, all-consuming love. We must also know that we love him with all our heart, soul, mind and strength.

How can we know God's love for us? We know God's love for us when we begin to realize the incredible sacrifice God made when he came to earth in human form, fully entering into the human condition (yet without sin), suffered for no wrong of us own and died. We know God's love for us when we begin to realize that his death was not because wicked men nailed him to a cross but because he climbed on that cross of his own free will to take our sins to the grave.

How can we know that we love him? Jesus said, "If you love me, you will keep my commands." (John 14:15) And then he said, "My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends." (John 15:12-13)

Gary Smalley says that life is all about relationships. Everything else is just details. To love God and to love people is what a huge chunk of the Bible is all about. God's great love for us is another huge chunkf. The rest of it is about what happens when human beings fail to do either of those and what God has to say about it.

Tradition tells us that St. John the Beloved would go around from church to church the same message over and over, "Little children, love one another." One day, someone who was tired of hearing John repeat himself so much asked John, "Brother, don't you have anything else to say to us?" John replied, "When you've learned that lesson, then we'll move on to the next."

O God, may your Church be filled with the love of Christ. And may we be rescued from the insipid and shallow love foisted upon us by our own carnality.