Love is a Verb

 

This Advent, love is not passive.  It is a verb, a force that requires us to reach out, to serve, and to care for others.  Henri Nouwen

Love is our true destiny (identity).  We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone – we find meaning with another.  We find meaning in sharing love with those around us. Thomas Merton

 

Both Nouwen and Merton invite us to move beyond cognitive comprehension of love to embodied expression.  Love is not hypothetical or theoretical; something to be studied so we can “pass” some test or earn some merit badge on our heavenly sash.  Love is lived in life with others and with all God’s creation.  Love is relational ~ with God, others, and yourself.

 

How do you love another person, is a question we all ponder. 

 

We tell the story of God’s love unable to be confined and contained, broke out of some heaven light years away to show us heaven here on earth ~ in a time of terror and oppression and fear of the Roman Empire.  God burst and broke into the world through the back door of a barn, so why would we look for love in only the perfectly polished and posh palaces of temples and politics today?  God’s love is subversive and subtle, not screaming and shouting trying to get us to buy into a system for $19.95. 

 

And how you express love is different and beautifully diverse from how I will.  And we are called to find ways to share this with each other.  So here is a blessing by Kate Bowler for the messy, imperfect, human-sized way of love:

 

O God, we are waiting,
we are longing for You,
o Lord of Love.

Jesus come. God have mercy. Christ have mercy. Spirit have mercy.

“and john said, ‘are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?’” Matthew 11:3

God have mercy. Christ have mercy. Spirit have mercy.

“God reached down from on high and took hold of me; God drew me out of deep waters.” psalm 18:16

God have mercy. Christ have mercy. Spirit have mercy.

Blessed are we who look to You o Christ and wait for the fulfillment of that love which is higher, deeper, fuller than anything we have ever known.

Blessed are we in our incompleteness, this place where we are overwhelmed who hear you saying, I come! despite all, I come bringing true life and health and healing and love that never ends.

Blessed are we who see You, o Saviour the light that dawned so long ago in that dark stable, shining in the perfection of love given, love received, enfolding us into the heart of Your beauty
and glory and bliss.

Blessed are we, looking into Your face, into the gaze of the beloved, the One who knows us best of all, and calls us God’s very own. God have mercy. Christ have mercy. Spirit have mercy.  Receive this, your inheritance: love has come for you. “I have come that they might have life, and have it abundantly.” John 10:10.  Amen.