Embodying Love

 

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind and your neighbor as yourself.” (Luke 10:27).

As we have held the parable of the Good Samaritan/Loving Kindness close to our hearts over the last two weeks, I pray you have discovered new nooks and crannies in this passage.  I pray you have found yourself pondering new titles for the parable.  Most of all, I pray you have found your life in this passage ~ for it is a gospel within a gospel ~ it is a summary of how we can embrace and embody God’s grace that is poured into our lives every single morning and with every single breath. 

Breathe in God’s grace for you this morning, breathe out the prayers that whip and whirl like the wind during a storm in your soul.

Breathe in God’s grace for you this morning, breathe out prayers for how you might find ways to practice the wisdom of the Good Samaritan ~ try to name a specific meeting or moment ~ person or place ~ when that might happen today. 

Before we leave this passage, I want to focus on the “correct” answer the lawyer gave to Jesus.  Remember, the lawyer had asked about full life ~ authentic life ~ thriving and meaningful life.  Eternal meant now.  Eternal meant residing and resting in the God’s realm before we breathe our last breath.  Eternal is being opened to God’s presence that is woven into everything and everyone all around, but we are too busy glancing or glaring or gnawing (see Morning Meditation from the week of February 4).  This parable invites us to gaze at what God is up to in our lives.  The lawyer’s question was about life ~ which is always our most basic question.  We are all longing to find the fullness and holiness of life.  And Jesus, as Jesus is oft to do, asked a question in response to the question.  How do you read, what do you think?  Jesus is inviting the lawyer to listen to his life, heart, and soul.

Pause and be in the prayer posture of gazing.  Slowing down long enough to listen to the rhythmic beating of your own heart and stirrings of your soul, because God shows up in our own lives. 

The lawyer responses by quoting two passages of the law.  The part about loving God from the top of your head to your pinkie toes comes from Leviticus 19:18 (who knew there were good verses in Leviticus of all places ~ the Bible is endlessly fascinating!!).  And the second part is from Deuteronomy 6:5.  The shorthand summary of the lawyer’s answer is love God, love others as you love yourself.  Full stop.  Love here is more than an intellectual ascent or re-arranging our cognitive furniture to a feng shui way of inner peace.  Love is work.  Love is fragile like Humpty Dumpty sitting on a wall.  Love is resilient and will pick up the brokenness like a glass that has shattered into a thousand sharp pieces.  Love can become complacent, contradictory, and grow cobwebs like a muscle that atrophies.  Love can have a strong back and soft front ~ I can share my voice and be open to another’s voice too.  Love is so much more than words can ever describe or define.  Love lives in your body.  Today, I invite you to draw a stick figure.  This doesn’t have to be a Van Gogh level masterpiece, the more rudimentary, the better.  Next to the head write down definitions of the word, “love.”  Next to the ears write words someone said to you recently about love.  Next to the mouth write words you said to someone expressing your love.  Next to the nose write words about the aroma of love (stretch yourself beyond “chocolate-scented”!).  Next to the heart write a moment when you felt the warmth of love wrap around you.  Next to the hands write when you shared loved with another through your actions.  Next to the feet write people who are accompanying you on the journey of life.  I pray this might begin to give voice to the multitude of the ways love is experienced and expressed in real ways in our lives in these February days.  With God’s love to you.  Amen.