TO FILL A LITTLE SPACE

Every February has been designated as Brotherhood Month, within which St. Valentine’s is also celebrated on the 14th day. Apart from the romantic dimension associated with Valentine’s day, we are helped to focus on that unique virtue which must characterise every child of God. In fact, our concrete love for others validates our professed love for God. In being love and showing love so profusely, God offers us a pattern for exercising our own love in its multidimensional aspects: to Him, to self, and to others. I wish to focus on the latter, primarily.

As a Christian you may know the theological vocabulary well, may quote Scripture profusely, may defend the faith accurately. But unless you speak the language of love to your neighbor, all that is of no avail. As Dwight L. Moody wrote, “The world does not understand theology or dogma, but it understands love and sympathy. A loving act may be more powerful and far-reaching than the most eloquent sermon.”

How is your love life? Not just to your family, but to your neighbors, to the people you rub shoulders with in your church, and any others with whom you must interact. Love was vital in the development of the early church and it can and must be the same today. Yet, Christians need to recapture its true meaning and its legitimate exercise toward fellow believers. Love does not demand uniformity; it can also thrive where there is diversity. A disagreement or a strong viewpoint does not mean lack of love. A French philosopher, speaking of the early Christians, remarked about their sense of unity and community which so characterised their presence in an alien world. If that love had not been so evident, he said, the world would still be pagan. “And the day when it is no longer there, the world will be pagan once again,” he added.

Could the prevailing paganism in today’s society be a tangible illustration of what he was talking about? Christians still talk a lot about love while practising it less and less. Once I read of an elderly lady who was asked the reason why she was so well loved and liked, and what her secret was of keeping so many friends? In her reply she stated: “Well, there’s just one daily rule I follow: I am always mighty careful to stop and taste my words before I let them pass my teeth.”

Furthermore, the gestures of love are just as important as the verbal expressions of it. Our words about love must be demonstrated in concrete acts which illustrate and validate real love. True love is perennial, flowing from one heart into the life of another. It does not depend on a switch that may be turned on or off, based on circumstances. In addition, love is not fulfilled from a script; it must spring naturally from a heart ready to respond to another human object it desires to encourage and impact!

So, be daring in your demonstration of love. Learn and relearn the language and the gestures of love, and use them in a world so devoid of it, in spite of excessive mention of it. Don’t allow anyone to change the original meaning given it by God. Following the example of Christ Himself, may your love be free from admission or rental fees, or any installment plan. Keep it in your life as a non-negotiable, and as a prominent part of your daily walk before God and the watching world!

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 11th, 2007 at 10:03 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.