But the fruit of the Spirit is
love
joy
peace
patience
kindness
goodness
faithfulness
gentleness
and self-control.
There is no law (Jewish Law) against such things.

Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.

( Philippians )

Love is our essential nutrient. Without it, life has little meaning. It's the best thing we have to give and the most valuable thing we receive. It's worthy of all the hullabaloo.

Cheryl Strayed

We must discover the power of love, the power, the redemptive power of love. And when we discover that we will be able to make of this old world a new world. We will be able to make men better. Love is the only way.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only because I love.

Leo Tolstoy

 Loving you is like being 10 years old again, scaling a tree with my eyes bright and skyward, wanting only to get higher and higher, without a thought of how I would get back down.

Lang Leav

Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.

Phillippians

Giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue;

and to virtue knowledge;

and to knowledge temperance;

and to temperance patience;

and to patience godliness;

and to godliness brotherly kindness;

and to brotherly kindness charity.

For if these things be in you, and abound, they make you that ye shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Peter

Do not neglect the gift that is in you.

living water

I am made in the image of God, not your image of God.

We take moments of reflection.

We take moments to be reminded there was a Christ who came to earth, a Christ called Emanuel, God with us, God in us, God through us, and yes at times God in spite of us, a God who indeed has God's moving and being within each and every one of our lives as we encounter The Christ and as we allow The Christ to be made real in us this day.

And that's another cool thing our Senior Pastor told us.

PROGRAM LISTINGS & PROGRAM SCHEDULES

You are, I am, we are the 'instruments' proper, fititng and effective enough to endure the task of verifying the viability, vitality and longevity of authentic love.

We live in a world in which sport is a dominant experience. We play games. All kinds. One after another! Even animals do. We're aware of our game-playing pretty much from the onset of cognition. Game-playing has never stopped. Believe it or not, it won't. It is a learning tool. What is it teaching us?

Understandably, many of us feel obliged or compelled to establish umpires for our game-of-life, all on up to our ultimate umpire - God.

In so doing, what have we done? Have we relegated God to umpiring? The great umpire in the sky? The score keeper? The trophy-deliverer? The one with the big thumb - up or down?

For some this is a wonderful thing. These percieve themselves as winners. When the final score is in - what a celebration that would be - vindication! These can thumb their noses with even more relish at losers! "We are the champions. You had it coming. Neh-neh-na-neh-neh!"

For some the officiating is a mighty mess - an ageless record of poor umpiring. There is barefaced cheating in open field. The umpire is at best silent, at worst complicit. One of three flash signs is posted at every objection: Life Isn't Fair - Life Isn't Supposed To Be Fair - Who Said Life Is Fair. "Suck it up!" Many of these gamers are campaigning for a new umpire. They've got strong contenders. Oh, boy!

For some the game is rigged. The draft is sick. The playbook is a mystery. The rule-book is a trick - wide open to all sorts of wild interpretations. The league is a fraud. Players are doped. Spectators are duped. This is a money-making franchise. Shakers want in. Gamers want out! Coaches shout, "Chicken!" It's a pressure cooker. Girl!

But is life a game?

Is it even near comparable to a game? If it is, are we the players or pawns of the ones playing the game? If it is not, why do all of us play so many games?

Let's PLAY a game.

Our game is called PARADISE. Level One: You own everything. Almost! It is the first day of your cognitive life. You are an adult. You can hear. You can see. You can touch. You can feel. You can taste. You are alive. You know you are alive. So the game begins!

CAVEAT: In reality this is not a game; it is an experiment. In fact, this is a phony experiment. So, you know, going in, this experiment is phony! It is an experiment nonetheless, so we call it a game - one you ought to play.

If you don't think it wise to play such a game you may jump directly to the video at the end of this episode. That's a laugh! If, however, you are confident or wise enough to use gifts with which you are endowed . . . play!

Curious facets of authentic love will sparkle in due course. If, however, you have an inclination that being wise is a boast, DON'T PLAY. If you don't know where you stand, you're on your own, for this game is a revealing experiment!

Would you like to play?

Love is not an arrow.

During an earlier episode of this series we discovered love and relationship are separate and different facets of life and living. They are often intertwined, but they are distinctly different. We are now learning that love does not seek his or her own things.

Love is outward.

A natural question would be: where does authentic love emanate if in its outwardness it reaches the lover as well as the beloved and changes both?

Love does not seek its own cause.

This is a pivotal and a facinating facet of true love. Authentic love embodies loving and being loved. Experientially, true love is loving and being loved. Not in return! Make this an Aha-Moment! True love is to love AND be loved. Period! It is not an exchange. It is not a trade. It is a birthing. A new creation. True love radiates in every direction. Try it, you'll see. Make that see, hear, feel, touch, taste, and recreate! It is a new energy. It is a new atmosphere. It is not an arrow.

Share your findings.

With eyes wide open we will begin to recognize how enemies of authentic love are able to flip the script - particularly on the innocent, the disinterested and the not-so-involved. We will stumble upon a grouping of popular minor forces filling the vaccum that exists in the absence of true love. These minor forces create great havoc in the name of good intentions. They are an ideology onto themselves. They embed themselves. My friends, if you are called upon to PROVE your love, run! Away! True love is not self-seeking; it is to love and be loved. It is live action. It is an ongoing experience.

Sharing time.

Oh, the joys of youth!

So I became a youth - up and coming - and was invited to address a conference. At the end of my talk there was Q&A. One question almost stumbled me. It is a simple question if faced today, but not to me then.

The question was: who are your heroes?

You see, the concept of heroes and role-models were not any part of the construct of my up-bringing. In a very real sense, and perhaps to save my very life, I was drafted into a cocoon of greats! Some quite alive, many dead; these were my influences. I was so intoxicated by their lives, I was unaware of their greatness as greatness in the 'now' sense of the word. Their greatness was imported to me as the natural embodiment of being. Heroes were in comic books. I was in a cocoon and had no idea I was in a cocoon. Don't knock it! It was awesome. I was now invited out into the big wild world. That kind of young is amazing - unaware of real danger - wrapped in arms of the Almighty - secured!

On that stage under a bright spotlight I needed to think quickly.

Heroes?

Oh!

I solved the problem as quick as I could then I named four.

I felt like a fraud relegating these wondrous beings to heroes, but there was no doubt about their impact on my upbringing, upon who I am and what I had become. Today, with a newer kind of understanding, I would not hesitate naming them heroes, though doing so still scrapes me for very different and more cerebral reasons.

These four are such colossals, most anyone hearing their names would recognize them and breathe. Of course, Jesus The Christ, was amongst the lot.

Answering other questions on that stage was a breeze.

At the end of the session I was greeted with the usual enthusiasm and with congratulations and flowers and generous servings of cherished wisdom. I never quite understood on such occasions why I was the sweet treat when in reality I was overwhelmingly the more well-treated and trained. Strange!

Through it all there was a strange man who did not shake my hand on my way out; he stopped me, looked me straight up and posed a far more stumbling question. This would change everything for me. He said, "Do you realize your heroes all died at the violent hands of those they reached out to love?"

I acknowledged the fact then confessed I had not thought about it like that nor noticed the connection before he pointed it out.

He said, "Think about that."

I did!

For days and nights and weeks and months and years ahead I did! At times it all scared the bejesus out of me. At times I cried out to God, "Why?" A unique thing happens when I ask God questions. Perhaps one day I'll tell you about that.

I still do not like the question: who are your heroes? Yet I continue to cherish all I have learned. I know love is not self-seeking and I have learned UNSELFISHNESS IS A THREAT to a sordid many.

Something arose along the way. It challenged me.

In a treacherous world, where gluttony, lust, greed, pride, anger, laziness and despair have free reign, love is being reframed as a softie. It has derogatory names.

It shows up mistreated. Abused. Shoved aside. Trampled. A door mat! Love is now battered and bruised. Love is a coward. Love is on its knees crying and begging. No wonder it needs an umpire.

My acquaintance with love has always been in the company of courage and strength, in the company of freedom and justice, in the company of faith and forgiveness, in the company of awe and wonder, in the comfort of truth. The love I know is an overcomer, a bridge builder, a creator, an empowerer, a sustainer, mightier than anything that ever was or is. What is this weak thing a great many seem to know quite well, with unvarnished proof raised for me to see? What is this thing? Where has my love gone?

It took a very long time, yet still, far too soon my trust was being pulvarized.

Which love is the fraud?

Love had some new hurdles to climb and was swiftly losing grip. Real Love had something to prove. Authentic love had a long road ahead if it were to re-establish itself as sovereign.

Now love - authentic love - had to conquer the questions of sons and daughters watching their fathers hanging like strange fruit from poplar trees, their blood feeding roots of trees, their houses burning.

Now love - authentic love - had to cure the incurable injury of siblings whose souls are being ripped - raped of their trust, stamped with the indignities of finely cured monsters.

Now love - authentic love - had to overcome children's losses to theives robbing them in plain sight of their birthrights, of their loss to systems flooding them from their homes, destroying their fields, shunting them into cruelties masterminded by the architects of mammon masquerading as ministers of value. Devils!

Authentic Love had hurdles to climb before begining the task of proving itself worthy of the slain, worthy of blood poured out in its name, worthy of mothers' pains. For this love, the love I am acquainted with, is no softie. And it is not blind. It does not work in vain.

Sofite is a well-dressed fraud. I am not a fan.

Love is not self-seeking. This is not a weak love; it is built with courage. It is strong. It is heroic. It is neither selfish nor alone. It is accompanied. My, my, my! Look at the company it keeps. No wonder it does not watch its back. It needs no umpire. It is not blind. Its attention is focused on the beloved. Isn't it awesome to discover 'love is not . . . self-seeking?'

Being fully functional and wholly human!

Love . . .

"Love is an active, accountable, responsible 'being' that makes decisions reflective of its authentic self."

When life challenges us very often love is put in play. So here I go again. This is a plausible scenario. I'm sure it has happened to someone somewhere, but what if it confronts you.

"Knowledge that takes you not beyond yourself is far worse than ignorance." Elif Shafak.

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Something To Consider

* * *

You are

What a PRIVILEGE!