Musings

Ok, this is what I started to write in with the post above, but it seemed to take on a more serious tone and to become very long, so I decided to post it seperately.

Chapel today was pretty good. I didn't leave frustrated today, although there were these guys sitting behind us who talked like crazy and sat there mocking the speaker--all of my friends and me were ready to turn around and glare at them! But oh well. We talked about what it meant to truly live a Kingdom lifestyle. How I long to bless my Savior by living a life that is madly in love with him! I'm learning that love is so much more than an emotion. We think we have to "feel" something all the time to love someone, when really emotion is only something that accompanies true love. Love is a choice, an act of will; it is submission and sacrifice; it is dying to yourself for that other person. May I not be found lacking in love for my God or my fellow man.

Perhaps you've noticed that I enjoy quotes. I do! There are some truly profound words out there if we'd just take time to find them. I was reading from Amy Carmichael's book Candles in the Dark, which is a collection of parts from different letters she's written to people throughout her life. The last section of her book pertains to parts on Love and Trust. I read through that section last night, I wanted to share some things with you that God pointed out to me through her words.

Love for others:

More and more I feel that love is the golden secret of life. The very air of heaven is love, for God is love and love never fails. So go on loving not only the loveless but the unlovable, the difficult, the perplexing, the disappointing--until the end.

Don't let us ever be afraid of being too loving. We can never love enough. Through all the chances and changes of life, hold all together in tender love. Let nothing quench love. Let nothing cool it.

I want to ask you to be very careful about love; it is our most precious possession. Don't let it be weakened anywhere. Be loving. Be courteous to one another....Love is never rude. Look not on your own things but on the things of others. What can you do today to make someone happy? Do that.

Love for God:

You will, I believe and trust, become more and more in love with a crucified Savior. He wants lovers. Oh how tepid is the love of so many who call themselves by His name. How tepid our own--my own--in comparison with the lava fires of His eternal love. I pray that you may be an ardent lover, the kind of lover who sets others on fire.

God's love for us:

I have been thinking of 1 John 4:16, which in one translation says "We have come to understand and to trust the love with God hath in us." We can never fully understand that love, but we can begin to understand it even here and now, and as we understand we trust. This means that we trust all that the love of God does; all He gives and does not give, all He says and all He does not say. To it all we say, by His most loving enabling, I trust.

"We cannot measure the love He showers on souls who give and abandon themselves to Him, and who have no higher aspiration than to do all that they belive to be pleasing to Him." [quoted by Amy Carmichael from Jeanne De Chantal]

If you have read all of this, you are truly patient. These are the things the Lord has been teaching me of what it means to love him and be loved by him. I want to close with (again) words of Amy Carmichael; take them into your heart, for I make them my special prayer for you today:

Go on hoping. Again and again when I had all but lost hope I used to go to the God of Hope and ask for the gift of hope. Never be shaken in hope. Never be cooled in love. Never get tired of loving and hoping--yes, and believing....May His love fill us, strengthen us, be in us hope and faith and patience--yes, and joyful expectation. We shall reap--you will reap--if we faint not. Now God bless you all. I shall be loving you to the end--and there is no end to love.