to love

Tomorrow at this time I will be Liberia. Hard to believe, but the humid heat, the need to wear a skirt tomorrow, and the already increased sense of business make it quite real.

Sailing has been relatively smooth and mildly relaxing. I even got to read a book for an hour today and watched Napoleon Dynamite with some friends.

I'm excited to go back. To be in a routine. To work hard. But I find that it's very easy to wrap myself in what I'm doing and forget that it's really about love. God’s love. His love for us. Our love for Him. And His love working it's way through us to the world we live in.

2 Corinthians 12:15 says

And I will very gladly spend and be spent for you; though the more abundantly I love you the less I be loved.

To spend and be spent. To be selfless. To love when it is not recipricated. We don't see much of that love in our world. I don't see much of that love in myself. But I would like to learn it.

Charles Spurgeon said

The first thing for our soul's health, the first thing for His Glory, and the first thing for our own usefulness, is to keep ourselves in perpetual communion with the Lord Jesus, and to see that the vital spirituality of our religion is maintained over an above everything else in the world.

A friend explained a theory of Christian Psychology to me, which stressed the importance of children seeing their parents love one another. The love between parents can, in essence, spill over into the lives of the children, therefore making them feel loved and secure.

I think that's how our lived need to be with Christ. The intimate fellowship and love we have for Him and with Him should spill out from our lives and effect the world around us. It's really the only way. We can't share the love of Christ if we aren't experiencing it ourselves.

I have heard it said that as Christians we need to keep the main thing the main thing. But I would rather echo David who said "One thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after; that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life," and keep the one thing the one thing.

And as our hearts are filled with the love of God, they will naturally spill into the world around us.