All Posts in Category: (09) The Manner of Life
The Power of Love
God is love. When we take up permanent residence in a life of love,
we live in God and God lives in us
1 John 4:16
Love never gives up.
Love cares more for others than for self.
Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have.
Love doesn’t strut,
Doesn’t have a swelled head,
Doesn’t force itself on others,
Isn’t always “me first,”
Doesn’t fly off the handle,
Doesn’t keep score of the sins of others,
Doesn’t revel when others grovel,
Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,
Puts up with anything,
Trusts God always,
Always looks for the best,
Never looks back,
But keeps going to the end.
Love never dies.
1 Corinthians 13:4-8
When I think of the greatness of this great plan
I fall on my knees before God the Father, a
and I pray that you, firmly fixed in love yourselves,
may be able to grasp how wide and deep and long and high
is the love of Christ and to know for yourselves that love
so far beyond our comprehension.
May you be filled though all your being with God himself
Ephesians 3:14-19
This post is about the power of love and features a movie entitled “Shelter“
Both the character and action of God is one of Love!
1 Corinthians 13 provides a snapshot of the attitude and actions of Love.
The qualities of love are “beyond human comprehension”.
The nature of love comes to full expression in the person and works of Jesus. He kneels to be with a woman “caught in the act of adultery.” (John 8;2-10) He calls a group of fisherman who are on the lowest rung on social status. (John 1:16-17) He eats with a tax collector that is considered the scum of society. (Mark 2:13-17) He approaches lepers who are rejected from social interaction with “normal” persons. He heals a sick lad because of the persistence of a mother. He feeds 5000 because he is concerned that they are hungry. (Mark 6:30-44) He travels to Samaria, of all places, just to encounter one woman who is terribly bruised and broken. (John 4:4-26) He heals two demoniacs whose behavior is a threat to human decency. (Matthew 8:28-34) Generally, he associates with “tax collectors and sinners” who are the rejects of respectable society. (Matthew 11:18-20) To the ire of the disciples He breaks social mores by talking with a woman, and that, alone. (John 4:27) He defends a woman who exercises extravagant behavior by pouring expensive perfume on Jesus feet. (Matthew 26:6-8)
The persons of the Trinity give and receive love. Made in God’s image, we too were created to give and receive love. Without this interchange will wilt like a without water!
The song by Celine Dion, “Because you Loved Me” captures the essence of the movie.
For all the truth that you made me see
For all the joy you brought to my life
For all the wrong that you made right
For every dream you made come true
For all the love I found in you
I’ll be forever thankful baby
You’re the one who held me up
Never let me fall
You’re the one who saw me through through it all
You were my strength when I was weak
You were my voice when I couldn’t speak
You were my eyes when I couldn’t see
You saw the best there was in me
Lifted me up when I couldn’t reach
You gave me faith ’cause you believed
I’m everything I am
Because you loved me
Now, to the movie “Shelter“. For those of you who tend to be extremely sensitive about certain behaviors and speech, you most likely should not watch the movie. For those of you who are biased about “strange” religious faiths, you probably should not watch the movie. For those of you who find it difficult to see the human condition of many, you probably should not watch the movie. By now, you get my drift!
“Shelter” is about a woman and man who are “street people. At first their relationship is one of antagonism. With time their lives become intertwined by the power of love. That’s enough as I don’t want to give away the impact of the movie!
Einstein on The Power of Love
I pray that Christ will live in your hearts by faith and
that your life will be strong in love and be built on love.
And I pray that you will have the power to understand
the greatness of Christ’s love —
how wide and how long and how high and how deep that love is.
Christ’s love is greater than anyone can comprehend,
but I pray that you will be able to know that love.
Ephesians 3:16-20
In the late 1980s, Lieserl, the daughter of the famous genius, donated 1,400 letters, written by Einstein, to the Hebrew University, with orders not to publish their contents until two decades after his death. This is one of them, for Lieserl Einstein
”When I proposed the theory of relativity, very few understood me, and what I will reveal now to transmit to mankind will also collide with the misunderstanding and prejudice in the world.
I ask you to guard the letters as long as necessary, years, decades, until society is advanced enough to accept what I will explain below.
There is an extremely powerful force that, so far, science has not found a formal explanation to. It is a force that includes and governs all others, and is even behind any phenomenon operating in the universe and has not yet been identified by us.
This universal force is LOVE.
When scientists looked for a unified theory of the universe they forgot the most powerful unseen force.
Love is Light, that enlightens those who give and receive it.
Love is gravity, because it makes some people feel attracted to others.
Love is power, because it multiplies the best we have, and allows humanity not to be extinguished in their blind selfishness. Love unfolds and reveals.
For love we live and die.
Love is God and God is Love. (1 John 4:15-17)
This force explains everything and gives meaning to life. This is the variable that we have ignored for too long, maybe because we are afraid of love, because it is the only energy in the universe that man has not learned to drive at will.
To give visibility to love, I made a simple substitution in my most famous equation. If instead of E = mc2, we accept that the energy to heal the world can be obtained through love multiplied by the speed of light squared, we arrive at the conclusion that love is the most powerful force there is, because it has no limits.
After the failure of humanity in the use and control of the other forces of the universe that have turned against us, it is urgent that we nourish ourselves with another kind of energy… If we want our species to survive, if we are to find meaning in life, if we want to save the world and every sentient being that inhabits it, love is the one and only answer.
Perhaps we are not yet ready to make a bomb of love, a device powerful enough to entirely destroy the hate, selfishness and greed that devastate the planet.
However, each individual carries within them a small but powerful generator of love whose energy is waiting to be released. (1 John 4:10-12)
When we learn to give and receive this universal energy, dear Lieserl, we will have affirmed that love conquers all, is able to transcend everything and anything. (Romans 8:38-39)
I deeply regret not having been able to express what is in my heart, which has quietly beaten for you all my life. Maybe it’s too late to apologize, but as time is relative, I need to tell you that I love you and thanks to you I have reached the ultimate answer! “.
Your father Albert Einstein
The Manner of Life – The love of Jesus
We know what real love is because Jesus gave up His life for us. 1 John 3:16
Love is God’s Manner of Living. It’s His characteristic way of acting. Jesus is the proof! “God loved the world this way: He gave His only Son” (John 3:16) Loving is Giving! At Christmas we seem to get it. Yet, in the long run “love is the only thing there’s just too little of!” (Burt Bacharach)
Hours before His death Jesus provided a clue: “Unless a grain of wheat is buried in the ground, it’s never more than one grain of wheat. But if it is buried, it sprouts and reproduces itself many times over. Right now I am storm-tossed. What am I going to say? ‘Father, get Me out of this’? No, this is My purpose. I’ll say, ‘Father, put Your glory on display through Me.’” (John 12:24-27)
Jesus was a “human-being-seed,” filled with “all of God’s character.” (Colossians 2:9) His purpose was to display “the extravagant dimensions of God’s love.”(Ephesians 3:18) Yet, He struggled: “Right now I am storm-tossed.” Why? His fulfillment, like a seed, would only come via the route of surrender: giving His heart away for the well being of others, “sinners”. (Romans 5:8) and “enemies.” (Romans 5:10)
Love is risky business! “Love means to commit oneself without guarantee, to give oneself completely…” (Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving) “To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one. Avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket of selfishness” (C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves)
Living is Loving (Giving)! Anything less is mere existence devoid of satisfaction.
Brennan Manning on God’s longing
“The foundation of the furious longing of God is the Father who is the originating Lover, the Son who is the full self-expression of that Love, and the Spirit who is the original and inexhaustible activity of that Love, drawing the created universe into itself.”
—Brennan Manning, The Furious Longing of God
God’s love is never based on your performance
“God’s love is never, never, never based on our performance, never conditioned by our moods—of elation or depression. The furious love of God knows no shadow of alteration or change. It is reliable and always tender.” —Brennan Manning, in The Furious Longing of God