What is Love?: A brief reflection

“We love because God first loved us.” God is the first lover, we are the first recipients. Love existed within God, and it flowed out from God into the world He created. 

Thomas Oord and Michael Lodahl, in their book Relational Holiness*, proposed this definition of love: “To love is to act intentionally, in response to God and others, to promote well-being” (73). They restate it this way: “To love is to respond to the inspiration of others – especially God — and by that response effect genuine flourishing” (Ibid.).

A few pages later, they describe love further with the Greek words translated “love” in English: agape, eros, and philia. If love is a willful response (not merely emotional, although emotions do have a role) to the actions or words of others, then it’s important to get a handle on the possible actions and what love means. 

What does love do in the face evil, when someone wrongs or hurts or abuses? Love responds intentionally to effect genuine flourishing — responds with goodness, justice, and peace. Returns good for evil. This is agape, and it’s the side of love that God is known for. 

What does love do when confronted with beauty, kindness, wonder, joy, and goodness? Love responds intentionally, often in happiness, to celebrate these and nurture them. Love promotes well-being of all that is bright, beautiful and good in the world. This is eros, and it is perhaps the easier of side of love for us. 

Lastly, love is relationship, just as God is Trinity which is an intimate bond of love. To effect genuine flourishing in others requires relationship, and deep and lasting flourishing can only be nurtured by deep relationships. Philia describes the side of love that builds deep bonds of loving community with others. 

These sides of love are all a part of one entity, so there are times where they overlap and work in tandem. 

It is significant to remember that as believers, our love for others is a response to the inspiration of God’s love for us and for others. We do respond to other people, but ultimately we are responding to God’s extravagant love toward us. It is through the immense warehouse of God’s love which we have access to through prayer and the Spirit that we can love agape-, eros-, and philia-style. 

Love is still our choice. We can choice to respond out of the love of God in our lives. Of course, that choice is largely impacted by our own acceptance of God’s love. If we don’t know or embrace the love God has for us, His intentional action for our flourishing, then how can we love others? When our hearts are still dark and corrupted by sin, we interact with others based on our beliefs about what will bring about our well-being with no concern about others. It is that default response that we learn to override and retrain through the Spirit of love, power, and a sound mind. 

So love involves our free will. Our love needs regular infusions with God’s love otherwise it withers and dies in the trials of life. God’s storehouse of love is immeasurable and always accessible. It outstrips, outpaces, outnumbers, outperforms all the evil and heartbreak in the world. We cannot exhaust it, for God has demonstrated it is inexhaustible by the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. 

Love includes emotion, but it is not limited to emotional reactions. Our emotions give direction on how to proceed, on what’s happening inside, on what sort of inspiration we are receiving. They are valuable in guiding our responses toward choices that effect flourishing, but in the end God calls us to make willful, not emotional, choices to love. And above all, we are to love Him more than anything or anyone else.

* Oord, Thomas Jay, and Michael E. Lodahl. “Adventures in Love.” Relational Holiness: Responding to the Call of Love, Beacon Hill Press of Kansas City, Kansas City, MO, 2005, pp. 69–87. 

Reflection on Today’s River Cleanup

Today I had the opportunity to join the Clean Sweep of the Great Miami River Watershed 2022. For nearly two decades, volunteers from all over our area have gathered in July to canoe portions of the Great Miami River, picking up debris and trash in an effort to preserve the river for generations present and to come. 

I personally feel passionate about caring for creation. In God’s original mandate to humanity, He specifically gave us the charge to tend and keep, cultivate and cause to flourish all that God had created. Not once does God ever rescind that command throughout the rest of Scripture. And Jesus declares that He has not come to abolish the Scriptures but to fulfill them. Over the centuries, Christianity has diverted from the calling to care for all of Creation and even our physical form in favor of the spirit and soul. Yet the work of Christ was not only to meet the spiritual needs of the crowds that followed Him, but also their physical needs, too: healing their illnesses, feeding the thousands, even turning water to wine! 

So this was an opportunity to engage in Creation Care in a more public way by teaming up with others who likewise care, even though the reasons why they care are different than mine. I have been mindful of garbage in my area, picking up what lies around. It’s a new thing for me to join forces with dozens of others and take the handful of hours to canoe a five-mile stretch to pull up all manner of things. 

Initially, I was a little uncertain as I was one person and it quickly became apparent that this was an event attended by big groups of people. I focused on absorbing the information I needed from the conversations happening around me, and eventually made it to the launch point with all the supplies required. Except I needed a partner to row the canoe with me. Thankfully, there was a guy named Tim who also needed a partner, even though he had come with a group. 

I’m especially grateful for Tim. He was a gentle, easygoing guy with a love of the outdoors and a follower of Christ. The next three and a half hours were painless (you know, except for the growing weariness in my shoulders from rowing, lol!). He was game to go ashore to hunt for trash, to turn around and go back for something we passed, to wait while I went after something and vice verse. In one spot, we came across corroded coils of barbed wire. They’d been there long enough to have chunks break off and be laying on the lower bank beneath them and for the trees to have grown up around them and their roots grow around portions of the coils. We could have spent hours there, and both Tim and I were reluctant to go and leave them. We just didn’t have the necessary tools or time to collect it all, but we collected what we could. It was meaningful to me that we both were saddened to leave mess.

I came home with a few treasures. One was a piece of that barbed wire. A memorial piece I guess, to something we tried to remedy but couldn’t. Under an overpass, I found the remains of license plate for an Ohio non-commercial vehicle. Only the metal was left; all the paint was gone. It was our first time to go ashore and hunt garbage. From then on we tended to favor the left bank of the river. At another spot, I glanced up into the overhanging trees to see a large fishing lure stuck in branches. My brother, Ethan, has started fishing as a hobby, so I immediately felt the curious interconnectedness of life. I haven’t decided if I’ll give it to him yet or keep it as a memento ;P  

Much further down river, Tim spotted blue trash hanging from a branch past the edge of the left bank. We made our way over, secured the canoe and began nosing around for other garbage too. Turns out there was a branch of the river on the other side. What we thought was the left bank was actually a slender island. I checked the water to make sure it wasn’t stagnant grossness before wading over. That water was clear and cold! Wow! I grabbed the trash out of the branch, and waded back. (Thankfully it was only ankle deep! My body would have gone into shock if it was much more than that, I’m sure, lol!) As I came out of the water I spotted a long feather. In my imagination, it belongs to an eagle, but more likely to a turkey vulture. Either way, the feather evoked a sense of awe and beauty, as it rested on the clear, cool water hidden from the rest of the river and the world, shaded by vibrant green trees. I stowed it in the front of the canoe with my other treasures. 

This whole adventure was surprisingly cool for a warm July day. Or else getting in and out of the water did a lot to help keep us cool. Trees shaded much of the river, especially the left bank which was to the east. And we traveled at a slow pace, due to stopping often for trash retrieval. No precipitation, and not horribly muggy either. I wore my Aussie hat (that is uncomfortably tight, unfortunately) and my safety sunglasses, but the sunglasses ended up being too dark because I couldn’t see into the shadowy bank well enough to spot trash. 

The hat was an opportunity to express myself and live into part of myself that I don’t usually show. Only now do I realize I really represented Australia with my Great Barrier Reef shirt on and my Aussie kangaroo hat, lol. I got to climb around on downed trees and jump out into the water, feeling adventurous and oddly sure of myself in the outdoors. At one point I commented to Tim that I was surprised how many shells we found. Like large clam-like shells as well as little ones. It was so puzzling. But they were up and down the river, so they must be natural to the river? Again, a strange sense of interconnectedness came over me, that maybe I wasn’t as foreign to these waters as I thought. Although when someone pulled up a catfish, I knew I wasn’t in my PNG mountain Kanye River! At another point, I overheard someone say that a particular area was full of poison ivy. I’ve not reacted to it, so either I’m not allergic or it wasn’t what they thought it was. Either way, I didn’t let it stop me from digging up trash. 

I had to pee a half hour into our run. And I promise, I went before we left! Let me tell you, that was a battle the whole time, trying not to pee as I’m using my core muscles to get in and out of the canoe, leaning over to pull up garbage all the while feeling the wetness of the river water on my canoe seat and praying that it really was river water! A few times I debated about quickly wandering off to a tree, but while I could have gotten away with that in PNG, I feared that was not permissible in the US. So I endured. 

And I laughed. Aspects of the retrieval process were just funny! In one place, the silt was thick but not dense. Trash had gathered under a fallen tree, and though Tim was able to get some of it, he didn’t get it all, so I got out to help. My feet got stuck in the muck! The sucking sound and the humor of thinking I was being smart and obviously not accomplishing want I intended all struck me silly and I couldn’t help chuckling as I finished retrieving the trash and slowing getting myself out of the mess and back in the canoe. 

Another time I laughed when we rounded a bend and saw some of our group carrying a grocery shopping cart to the edge of the water! Like, how in the world did that end up in the river?! I figured they’d have to leave it, because how could they get that back? Surely not in a canoe, lol! We lost track of them as the river split around an island. But wouldn’t you know, as the river merged again, here came the canoe with the shopping cart set in between the front and back seats! Oh, it was comical to watch this green outdoorsy canoe carry a shopping cart down river! 

At various intervals, Tim and I would chat. He’s the facilities manager for Regal/RexNord. Had spent much of his working career behind desks, but this job that he’s had for three plus years has been more hands on and active, something he’s very much enjoyed. He asked what I do, to which I responded that I am a pastor in training. He is a church goer, attending Ginghamsburg. In particular, he meets with a group of guys at 6am on Wednesday mornings around a campfire (because the local fire chief is a member of the group), and he loves it. Tim is a Tipp City man, having lived there since he was four, nearly five decades ago. When he can, he takes his camper out. This weekend, he’ll head up to the St. Mary’s lake, and since he has the rest of the day off, he’ll likely head up there this afternoon. Perhaps I’ll never see him again, and perhaps, as life goes sometimes, I’ll bump into him somewhere. He told me as we parted at the end that he would mention me to his Wednesday guys group, so that when I felt a special boost that day, I’d know where it came from. And I know I will need it because Wednesday is slated to be a very long day. 

I am so grateful for the chance to meet some new people, connect to creation in a new way, work together with others who love our waterways, and for a beautiful day and setting for all of the above. I grew further into a truer version of myself. I showed myself that I am sufficiently capable of trying new things without my close people with me to lean on. I allowed myself to be myself (aside from not peeing in the woods) around these new people. I also discovered that I am not confident in talking about my profession with others when I don’t know their faith background. More room to grow. I want to create a cabinet or case to begin housing mementos from these excursions into my areas of passion and interest. I have a 1945 wheat penny I found while weeding in a community garden the other day that I would put in that treasure cabinet, too. And who knows what I may pull up with my magnet fishing gear?! All I know is that this a season of growing aware of and into myself, and I want to honor that in a special way. Perhaps my friend John can help me whip up something in his wood shop....

Wealthy much?

Luke 16:13 "You cannot serve both God and money."

    Luke 16 opens with an intriguing parable about a financial manager who gets fired for mishandling his master's money. Too proud to get a blue collar job or beg, he resorts to shrewd business deals: he reduces the debts on every account, winning the favor of the people who just caught a break. And he plans to collect once he's out on the street. 

    Jesus's lesson? Use your wealth to win friends. Curious, isn't it? I think what Jesus is getting at is that we tend to hold tightly or spend foolishly, but what we ought to do is use our wealth to benefit others (which even this worldly manager knew would boomerang back and help him). Then when we have nothing left, we will still have the relationships we cultivated with our wealth, both here on earth and in heaven. 

    Too often, God's people in the middle class strata get trapped in the allure of wealth, believing that because they are good and faithful and have access to God's riches, they are free to do what they like and enjoy all the pleasures of life (like the manager when he was employed with his master's money at his disposal). We are grateful that we aren't poor like "those people" and give out of our surplus towards "worthy causes" to satisfy the biblical call to generosity. And when our friends and admirers see our "sacrifices" we feel like we have accomplished a job well done. But Jesus issues sharp rebuke: "You are the ones who justify yourselves in the eyes of others, but God knows your hearts. What people value highly is detestable in God's sight."

    So what is in your heart? The deception of wealth is that we aren't actually chasing a dollar bill -- we are chasing what wealth can provide. At least, what we think wealth can provide. We want the life experiences, the satisfaction of our desires, the promise of safety, the status of comparable or competitive achievements. And who benefits from all of this? Who is at the center? Self. Me, myself, and I. Certainly not God, and only inadvertently do other people benefit. 

    But what if we believed God when He said all our needs are met in Him? Not that He would fulfill our worldly aims, but that in Him those things no longer matter. Instead we receive something far better, something hardly expressible in words: belonging, love, knownness, withness, the most faithful and longsuffering love-relationship we will ever find. And then everything snaps into focus, and all the resources at our disposal get plugged into the mission of introducing as many people as possible to this Love. 

Everything We Need

 “By his divine power, God has given us everything we need for living a godly life. We have received all of this by coming to know him, the one who called us to himself...”

‭‭2 Peter‬ ‭1:3‬ ‭NLT‬‬

 

Do you find yourself struggling to live a godly life? Like, you’ve been trying to wrestle out this one thing, or maybe a few, and you just can’t seem to nail it down. And it affects everything else. Maybe it’s your words you can’t keep control of, or a cycle of thoughts that just butt in and you can’t seem to stop them. Maybe it’s the hackles that raise up on your neck whenever *that person* comes around, or your propensity to self-soothe with food or spending or binging. Whatever it is, you know it’s an area that needs work, but you just can’t seem to make any headway. 

I have another question for you. Do you know Him, the One who called you to Himself? Do you pray to hear from Him? Do you study your Bible to discover His heart? Do you peer into the everyday moments of your life, looking for every trace of Him? Bet you didn’t expect those kinds of questions, did you. The godly life is about becoming like God, and we become most like the people we spend time with and adore. 

It’s the difference between a parent humoring his child by dressing like the child’s favorite character and the child putting on the costume and acting just like her favorite character. The parent gives a solid try, but he doesn’t adore the character so he won’t get the voice just right or put his hand on his hip exactly so or respond to a crisis in a true-to-character way. Don’t worry, though, the child will be able to correct him, because the she knows and loves the character. 

Jesus told us that His way is not burdensome. He took care of the impossible task of purchasing our freedom and forgiveness. Now everything we need for a godly life is available to us in relationship with Him. It was never about striving more, but falling more deeply in love with the One who already and forever deeply loves us. The strivers believe their efforts will win them love and prove they are worthy to be accepted. Trouble is, in Christ none of that striving matters anymore. It wasn’t effective before Christ, and it is even less effective now. Why? Because love has never had to be earned. Right standing before God is not merely a legal transaction; Christ reconciled the wayward beloved to the broken-hearted, spurned Lover. Yes, evil and sin must be atoned for, but Christ is the only one who could pull that off. As for the rest of us, all that is ours to do is respond to the lavish grace poured out in us, turn towards Love, and enter the Way that will wind a path into the very heart of God. Everything for the journey has already been graciously given us, received as we continue to accept the invitation to know intimately Love.

Extravagant Love

 “Observe how Christ loved us. His love was not cautious but extravagant. He didn’t love in order to get something from us but to give everything of himself to us. Love like that.” 

Ephesians 5:2 TM

 

Now doesn’t that seem like a tall order? Love extravagantly. Give everything of yourself without expecting return. Is that even possible? Doesn’t God know how dangerous it is to open oneself up to others that way? You might as well hang a sign on your door saying “Everything inside is free!” 

 

“Exactly,” Jesus says. You find your life when you give it away, but try to hold onto it with both hands? You have no hand open to receive the Kingdom of Heaven. Does this condone irresponsibility? Perhaps. By the standards of this world. But in God’s economy, the more you give, the more you receive. 

 

Because we have been forgiven, we also are to forgive. Because God has loved us, we also can and do love others. How we judge others is the measure by which we’ll be judged. Do you desire to be loved extravagantly? Lavished with mercy? Swamped by grace? Give out of what you have already received, and more will be poured into your life. 

 

And don’t fuss over whether those you love are worthy or not, or deserve it or not. You didn’t. They don’t either. Yet God is far ahead of you in showing His great love and grace to them…and to you. Observe how Jesus loved you, and then love like that.

God Delights in You

Are you discouraged about your life? Do you wonder if anything you do matters? Have you questioned God about the purpose of your life? 

I have. I have felt bogged down and slowed up. I have wondered what in the world I am on this planet for and if what I find myself doing each day is of any worth. 

Many of us have our nose to the grind, doing enough each day to get ourselves through it as well as those dependent on us. It is a rare moment that we can lift our heads to look around and ask these perplexing and disheartening questions. Too many of us, instead of facing the answers, duck our heads again and distract ourselves with the routines we’ve surrounded ourselves with. But the distractions don’t always work, do they? Our energy and enthusiasm for life continues to drain away as we become more and more miserable. 

Gee, you think, thanks for that depressing reality. I think I’ll go now. But before you check out, I have some really encouraging news. 

If your life is miserable, I challenge you to examine your relationship with God. Are you actually in a love relationship with Him, or are you holding Him at arms length, acknowledging His existence but distancing yourself from His presence? 

Psalm 37:23 says that the LORD, the Eternally Present One, directs the steps of His beloveds, the ones who love and trust Him, and He gets so excited about every detail of their lives. Do you know that God is present with you even when you are hiding in the grind of life? That He actually enjoys being a part of your life and longs to direct your steps into good and life-giving things? Your parents didn’t force God to create a life when they conceived you. No, God was excited to spark a new life, one so unique that no other life would ever match it. Can you imagine, then, how sad He must feel that you dislike and check out from your life? That wasn’t His intention at all! But if that is what you are feeling, then embrace this hope: God desires to turn your life around and fill you with good things. He longs for you to find your fulfillment and life in Him, and through Him discover your life as He imagines it, one you both can delight in. 

This hope marks the beginning of a journey, one that will require something of you: perseverance no matter the discomfort. It means developing trust with the Eternally Present One, that He does have good steps planned for you even if the next one looks scary or threatening. It means choosing to immerse yourself in the Love Letter of God’s Word and the company of other Beloveds learning to love and be loved. This is not a wish, something you give a mental assent to but do nothing about. And it will take time, but He is up for the journey if you are, and He will supply all you’ll need for it too. 

Suffering with Christ

Suffering. We see it all over the place. Economic suffering. Physical suffering due to disease. Social suffering because of racism. These are just a few of the present areas of suffering, on top of the ongoing, day in day out sufferings around the world of poverty, homelessness, human trafficking, labor abuse, racial and gender inequality, famine and drought. But what I have discovered is that unless it touches me personally, I experience a momentary grief before continuing about my life. I see for a moment and then blink and open my eyes to something less distressing.

See, I, like most people, pay little attention to any suffering unless it is personal. If it doesn’t affect me personally, I have very little staying power. So when I come to passages like Romans 8:16-28, I fail to grasp Paul’s meaning. Here we find him saying that if the Spirit has moved in to live in our hearts, then we are children of God and heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ. But there is a condition on that statement: “if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory” (v.17).

OK, it seems that Paul is saying we can know that we are children and heirs if we share in Christ’s sufferings. Reading from a personal suffering paradigm, this is very difficult to understand. How am I to share in suffering that is already done? Christ lived over 2000 years ago: whatever was personal suffering for him was over and done a long time ago.

But what if this isn’t personal suffering? What if we are talking about Christ’s present sufferings? How is Christ presently suffering? God is present in all the earth. God is love, and love is vulnerable and long-suffering, and present. While I have no trouble imaging God as present in my personal suffering, I can’t quite wrap my mind around God being that present with every suffering being in all creation. He doesn’t sleep; he doesn’t look away; he doesn’t numb; he doesn’t lash out. God has created us in his likeness, but I think its like comparing a LEGO person to its human creator. Sure there are arms and legs, torso and head, hands and face, and yet there are so many differences its hard to comprehend. God is not bound to the limitations we are: he can weep even as he laughs and growls in outrage.

God is suffering with his creation. He is in anguish with us over the injustice, the pain, the systemic structures that keep some in power and others in bondage. We have learned that outrage from God. We do not have to pray that he would see and act. The Spirit in us that tells us we are sons and daughters is the same Spirit that opens our hearts to the suffering of others. This is Christ’s suffering.

The next part of that verse reads “...in order that we may share in his glory”(v.17b). What is his glory? It is so rich and multifaceted, I’m not sure we can truly grasp what it is in our present time, but I do believe that if his sufferings is the sufferings of all creation, then his glory must include the redemption and healing of all creation as well. It’s not personal glory, that fake glory the enemy tempts us to pursue. If anyone had a right to pursue personal glory, Christ did, but then he wouldn’t be the Christ. No, his glory is the glory of every wrong being made right, of sinners embracing grace, of creation being reborn. So if we want in on this glory, we must engage in the suffering.

But just in case that freaks you out a little, Paul follows it up with “I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the future glory that will be revealed in us” (v.18). Do not be afraid. As overwhelming as the suffering of the world is, the glory of all being freed from death, decay, bondage, sin, and pain is going to be so totally worth it all. It’s gonna be so good we’ll think to ourselves, “That’s it?! That’s all we had to do for all of this?! Wow...that just doesn’t seem like enough. Maybe we should go back and do more....”

In the meantime, we hope. We wait. We eagerly look to that future even as we patiently go about God’s Kingdom work now. Remember, “God is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9).

Our faith is not weak if we suffer, if we feel stretched between hope and despair. Much healing is needed. And we were not created to hold all the earth’s pain like God does. Beholding that much pain leaves us gasping for breathe, eyes wide, nostrils flared, heart racing. In those moments, we don’t know what we should to do.

“We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God. And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.”
(Romans 8:26-28)

And so we give thanks. We thank God that He in Christ already bore all of that for us, that God is still bearing it, and that we are never called to bear it alone. We thank God that He is at work in the world through the Spirit of grace, love, and creation.  If the Spirit is in you then you have hope; in fact, you are part of that hope embodied as you go about the Kingdom work of saving and restoring and reconciling. Live in hope; walk in faith; pray in the Spirit. And don’t be afraid to bear with God others’ suffering.