Time for Extravagant Love
A young mother of a two-year-old looks down at the gentle rounding of her stomach as she enters the fourth month of her second pregnancy and secretly wonders if it’s possible for her to love another child as much as she does her first. A doting grandmother, having fallen head over heels in love with her first grandchild, also harbors a fear that she’ll be all out of love by the time another grandchild is born.
What both of these women fail to realize is that love isn’t something we dredge up from the inner sanctums of our own souls. God is love. He is the ever flowing, everlasting source of love. Not only does He increase our capacity to love whenever He sends someone new into our lives, He makes it possible for us to love extravagantly, with a love that exceeds all boundaries.
Couldn’t our world use more extravagant love right now? We have an entertainment industry that often suggests love is synonymous with sexual activity. We see daily reports about pockets of violence where it seems the darkness of hate has overpowered the light of God’s love, if only temporarily. We have children and teenagers shuttling from one foster home to another, wondering why they’re the ones forced to look for love in all the wrong places.
To love extravagantly we have to be willing to love the unlovable—to reach outside our own comfort zones. And we have to be willing to love even if it means we’re risking being hurt later. My mother very reluctantly moved into an assisted living facility three years ago. Certain she had already made all the friends she needed in her life, she kept to herself at first. But then she met Marge. The two became fast friends and loyal bridge partners. Marge died this week. “I will
miss her so much,” my mom told me. “I really loved her.”
It’s never too late to risk loving again, and love is always worth any pain it brings. When we dare to love by calling on the power we have through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, we can send extravagant love into the world. May that be our focus this Valentine’s Day.
Nancy Parker Brummett
(a freelance writer who lives in Colorado Springs, CO)
No comments:
Post a Comment