Are you loving?   Sometimes.  To some people.  Maybe not so much to others.  Then, are you really loving?  Do you pick and choose the times and the people?  Maybe we all do.

 “Love isn't something natural,” Fromm postulated, unless it is in short spurts. “Rather it requires discipline, concentration, patience, faith, and the overcoming of narcissism. It isn't a feeling, it is a practice…”¹ except for Jesus; for Jesus, love was always natural.  He must have blown the minds of the Jewish leaders. How I would like to have seen the looks on their faces as Jesus gave them his ‘take’ on the Law, expounding on things in such a way that fulfilling the letter of the Law stopped very short.  Every time Jesus started with, ‘You have heard it said __, but I say,’ they truly must have cringed. 

And then he talked about LOVE ~ “You have heard the law that says, ‘Love your neighbor’ and hate your enemy. But I say, love your enemies! Pray for those who persecute you! In that way, you will be acting as true children of your Father in heaven. For he gives his sunlight to both the evil and the good, and he sends rain on the just and the unjust alike. If you love only those who love you, what reward is there for that? Even corrupt tax collectors do that much. If you are kind only to your friends, how are you different from anyone else? Even pagans do that. But you are to be perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect.”² Who says such things?  Only Jesus.

When I asked if you are a loving person, the truth to your response surely finds its roots in how you have been loved.  Or how you perceived the love that you received…[or if Jesus has since intersected your path]. Similarly are our interpretations of God, and how God loves us.   We are all victims somewhat to those who have interpreted God to us—from the time we were small children.  I have written before about the life cycle of our souls; first, it is the mother (the usual primary caregiver) who shapes and nurtures the soul, and then there are other influences that open or close the God-sized space that God alone is meant to inhabit.

Did you have loving parents, and did they love God and raise you to know him and his great love for you?  If so, then you were at an advantage right from the start.  On the other hand, if neither were true—or worse, if they or others of influence in your life represented him duplicitously, you probably have wanted nothing to do with God, or are having to overcome jaundiced, flawed thinking of a God who is absolutely mad about you—a God who cares enough about you to know exactly how many hairs (or not) are on your head right this minute, and precisely how many days you will inhabit planet earth.  God knows, cares about everything that is ‘you’, and loves you completely.

Jesus was love.  I think of how he went out of his way to break the social code of his day to express love to an unloved woman, which John captured in chapter four.  (To read the story:http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John%204.1-42&version=NIV&interface=print)  How I love this about Jesus!  See, Jesus was meek, but he was anything but timid.  In broad daylight, he spoke to this woman that everyone knew was a very loose woman, and a despised Samaritan at that.  The Jews hated the Samaritans!  It would be like a Jewish rabbi approaching a Muslim woman in broad daylight in Gaza City today—he would be chastised and corrected later or more.  But Jesus was on a mission.  Jesus came into the world to save sinners, and the woman at the well was a sinner.  Jesus came because he loved.  He extended that love to the woman at the well that day, and her life was never the same.

Jesus comes yet today to sinners … because he loves; if we can be convinced of it, if we can believe it, our lives will never be the same. Jesus introduced a new standard of love, but once coming to know him, we can love like him.  Really!

1 - Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving

2 – Matthew 5.43-48, NLT