“I said early this year that my word for the year is love. I didn’t want it to be love. I’m sure love is the number one word on Christian signs. We talk about it often and through it around as if it is an easy emotion. I often use it as a filler phrase when I don’t know what else to say but I want my husband, children, siblings to know that they are special. “I love you” fills the silence but what am I really saying? I tried to pick another word, but love it is. God has a lot left to teach me about love, real love, His love. This week I am going to share a few of the things that I have been meditating on about love.

I am not deserving of God’s love, but He loves me because of His grace. Without grace God would not love me and without grace I can not really love others. Ephesians 2 starting in verse 1 and skipping over the details of our ugly sin to verse 3 “And you were dead in the trespasses and sins… and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.” (emphasis mine). Children of wrath aka we deserve the condemnation of God, to be cast out of His presence. “But God being rich in Mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ- by grace you have been saved.” Eph 2:4
God gives us what we do not deserve, love, demonstrated by his death for us while we were still sinners. (Rom 5:8)

This part is easy for me! Praise the Lord I am saved. Thank you God for the free gift. I have been forgiven much… but I do not want to forgive others. I am the man in parable that was forgiven a HUGE debt and goes to the man who owes him so little and demands it paid.
“Beloved if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.” 1 John 4:11
So maybe when I understand what His love really means it is not so easy, actually it is not easy at all. I do not want to love with grace.

When others do not act deserving of love, that is when love is real love. That is when it is no longer self serving but true, honest, grace-filled love. God gave his life to show his love for me. It was so so costly to Him, and free to me. Because of that I can lay down my plate missing only one bite to help my struggling toddler, get up to comfort my teething baby that is just cranky, admit that I have no idea what happened the other 23 hours of my waiters day, trust that the lady cutting in front of me at the grocery store is in need of those 3 minutes more than I am, lay down my book to listen to what is on my husbands mind, tell my friend the truth with gentleness and stop to listen to her.

God help me to love others in the ways that you you have loved me. May my love be powered by grace not self serving and lacking grace. Help me see more and more how costly your love is and yet free to me, let my love be free to others even when it is costly to me. Let it be joy to me to love others with your grace filled love. Amen.”