Love. Love one another. Love your neighbour as your self. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your mind, with all your soul, with all that you are. Love.
Not long after Susan and I were dating, I remember a very distinct moment when my heart skipped a beat. I had this feeling that everything had changed in my life. I tried my best to think my way through it, to some how make sense of it, and to try and figure it all out. I couldn’t. I was in love. This wasn’t infatuation, it was much deeper than that. It was changing my life, calling me out of myself, inviting me to live into a relationship grounded in what I believe unto this day, to be the work of God’s loving spirit. And I couldn’t do anything about it. I could not reason it out or subject it to my calculating mind. Love was much bigger than that and after a few weeks of utter inner turmoil, I realized that I needed to surrender myself to love. I had to follow my heart. All that was required of me was to release myself to this love and let go.
Shane Claiborne speaks of love (Animate, Practices—Money, the Joy of Sharing, Sparkhouse, 2014). It is the heart that leads us into relationships, into community, into service, into the practice of sharing and into the territories of generosity and compassion. God’s love embraces us and draws us into relationship with the Divine, with the Christ, with holy wisdom, with the community of faith, with mission, with ministry, with one another. At the root of the Christian life is a love for Christ and a love for one another and our selves expressed through our life in community—the embodiment of Christ. So my question is, are we in love? Are we in love with Christ? Are we in love with this community of faith we know as High River United Church? Are we in love with our church? Is our heart leading us into a deeper relationship with God? Are we releasing ourselves to God’s love? Are we surrendering to God’s love? Does our heart skip a beat when we think of our congregation, our church, it’s people and the world it serves? Are we overcome with love? Do we permit ourselves to have an emotional response rooted in love when we ponder our relationship with God and our church?