Monday, August 29, 2011

Devotional--Love, Part V

Matthew 22.34-40

34 When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, 35and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. 36‘Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?’ 37He said to him, ‘ “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” 38This is the greatest and first commandment. 39And a second is like it: “You shall love your neighbour as yourself.” 40On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.’
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  Do you remember how Dr. Seuss says that the Grinch's heart is two sizes too small?

  God is the opposite--imagine a heart filled with more love than you can imagine, then double it, and you're still not even close to how loving God is.  God's love for you is so great that nothing in this world can separate you from it.

  And God's greatest wish for us is that we love God, love one another, and love ourselves.  It's that simple and that complicated.  Sometimes it is easy to love others, sometimes people make it very difficult to love them, and sometimes we do a very good job of not loving ourselves.

  But God loves you more than you can imagine, and it doesn't depend on anything you do.  So I hope that you can find some ways today to reach out to those who surround you and remind them of your love for them, whether or not they deserve it.  The more love we share with others, the more readily we accept love that is returned.  May we try and emulate God in all we do.

Blessings

Romans 8:38-39

38For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, 39nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

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