Tag Archives: Agape

Devotional

True Love

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Read 1 Corinthians 13

ALSO IN SCRIPTURE
“No, O people, the LORD has told you what is good, and this is what he requires of you: to do what is right, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God” (Micah 6:8)

There are plenty of films that try to capture the emotional reality of true love; seldom do they ever truly succeed. When it comes to true love, we Western humans cannot think past a good friendship or a steamy love affair. That is simply how we are wired to think because that is what we are told true love is all about. Frozen was one of the films that caught a glimpse of true love; however, even there, it was bogged down by the fact that the love came between two sisters who actually cared for each other. That love is not hard to imagine.

What still of a love that is for someone or, in this case, something that has tried to destroy you. That kind of love is of the AGAPE kind, the kind we learn and sing about in church, the kind that our Scripture passage is on today, though we sadly often relegate this passage to weddings and nothing else. This is sad, because weddings were the very last thing on the Apostle Paul’s mind when he wrote those words.

In the hit 90s/2000s show, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Buffy follows Angel outside following his return from. It is here that she learns he is about to wait for the sun to rise in order to die. For those not familiar with the show, Angel (or Angelus) was a most evil vampire who delighted in torturing, maiming and destroying people prior to killing them. For Angelus, the hunt was a giant cat and mouse game.

In Season 2 of the show, we learn that Angelus’ soul was restored by gypsies so that he would be tortured by the memory of all the lives he had destroyed. The only thing that would cause him to loose his soul again is if the spell failed to work, even for a moment. Well, needless to say, Buffy and Angel got romantically involved and ended up making love. In that moment of happiness, his soul was lost and he became Angelus again.

I don’t need to say this, because it is obvious, but Angelus begins to hunt Buffy, playing cat and mouse with her, hurting her loved ones, killing her watcher’s girlfriend, and raising hell just about everwhere. He literally seeks to destroy her by destroying and dividing everyone around her, and finally Buffy realized she needed to kill him; however, right before she did his soul was returned to him as Buffy’s friend Willow and her watcher recast the spell to put the curse back on him.

Still, Buffy did kill him to close the portal to hell that he had opened. The only way to close the portal was to offer the blood of the one who opened it and so, tragically, Buffy had to kill him even though she knew her Angel was back. This was a harrowing moment, but in Season 3 we find that Angel has been returned back to this world. No one is sure how or why, not even Angel, but upon his return he realized that the world would be better, safer even, with him gone.

Of course, there are a lot of details I am skipping over, but this brings us back to the scene I started out with above. Buffy follows Angel outside and discovers he’s about to kill himself via the light of dawn, and she is pleading with him not to do it. Angel is insistent and they even get violent with each other as Angel tries to push her away so that he can carry out his plan. He yells at her about how he can remember EVERY victim, every single way they died, every horrible thing he did to them and he has come to realization that he does not deserve Buffy’s love let alone to live.

After Buffy smacked him to knock sense into him, Angel hit her back and then grabbed her shouting, “Am I worth saving, huh? Am I a righteous man? The world wants me gone!”

Buffy tearfully responded, “But what about me? I love you so much. I tried to make you go away. I killed you and it didn’t help. And I hate it. I hate that it’s so hard and that you can hurt me so much. I know everything you did because you did it to me. God, I wish that I wished you dead. I don’t.” Pausing, Buffy whispered, “I can’t.

The fact is Buffy and Angel would never get the romance they once had back. That was over. Yes, they loved each other, but given the circumstances, their love could NEVER be eros again. Instead, this deep-seeded love must grow into agape love, where they care for each other in the most deepest and purest of senses. Their love is sacrificial, sanctified, holy and true. That’s right, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, captured the essence of selfless, true love. Buffy teaches us what Paul meant in his chapter on love. And this love, this selfless, sacrificial love will always conquer evil, sin and death. Why did Angel return from the grave with his soul, becaue he was consumed by TRUE LOVE, which cannot exist apart from God. He had been given a second, second chance and Buffy loved him too much to let him throw that away, even though his presence would continue to torment her because she can never be with him.

Friends, we are called to live such lives of love because that is what Christ calls us to. We are not to be consumed by the world or the way the world does things; rather, our response is to be TRUE AGAPE, TRUE LOVE. That means we are to be patient, kind, non-jealous, peaceful, humble, respectful, well-mannered, non-judgmental, just, merciful and truthful people. We aren’t to rejoice at wrongdoing, nor are we to rejoice at punishment; rather, we should be seeking reconciliation between all people, their communities, and God…just as Buffy did with Angel. Let us follow suit with Buffy and be a people of true love.

THOUGHT OF THE DAY
“The hardest thing in this world is to live in it.” – Buffy Summers

PRAYER
Lord, help me to live in this world as you did. Help me to be an agent of true love. Amen.

Devotional, Previous Post

A LOOK BACK: Beyond the ‘L’ Word

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Read John 14:11-21

ALSO IN SCRIPTURE

“Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.” (1 John 4:8)

Quote

In our culture, we often romanticize what love is, do we not? When we hear the word “love”, we often think of bouquets of flowers, long walks along the shoreline in the moonlight, and romantic gondola rides through Venice. We often think of warm candlelight, nights with a loved one by the fireplace, and all of the warm and fuzzies that make our hearts flutter at the sound of “love.”

How can we help having such an image? Our culture is constantly feeding us with this understanding of love. Our supermarkets and bookstores are lined with romance novels, magazines with tips on having a better love life, cards that tell your significant others how much you love them and many other things that paint this particular picture of love. We are inundated with love songs that fill the radio airwaves and our mp3 players. Just try and find a song on the radio that is NOT about romantic love. They exist, but they are definitely hard to find. Romance also shows up in movies where characters are “in love” with people as well as monsters such as vampires, werewolves and, if you can believe it, even zombies.

If you were a visitor from another planet and you were trying to understand our language, you would come to the conclusion the word “love” mostly means “romance. Yet does that sufficiently describe the word love? Is romance all there is to the word love, or does love extend far beyond that particular definition. I am sure most, if not all, people know the answers to those questions; however, when love plays out in different ways in our lives we often don’t recognize it for the love that it is.

When I was a teenager, my parents loved me by not allowing me to do EVERYTHING I ever wanted to do. The loved me by not always letting me have my way. The loved me by allowing me to make mistakes and suffer the consequences. They loved me by holding me accountable to the expectations the set of me. They also loved me by letting me go to experience the world on my own terms. That last one is, perhaps, the hardest love for a parent to exhibit. Letting go, holding people accountable, allowing people to make their choices and reap the consequences, and saying “no” to people, often does not sound or feel like love. Yet, depending on the circumstances, it can and often is a form of love!

When Jesus called Peter to love and feed his sheep, he was not calling him to romance; however, he was calling him love in a much more profound and powerful way. He was called to love people as a brother, as a friend, and as a parent; however, Peter was also called to love beyond those classifications as well. He was called to love as GOD LOVES. He was called to invite those who wished to be invited and let go those who wished to be let go. He was called to guide and to lead; however, he was also called to step down and be led. He was called to live a life that brought hope, healing and wholeness to others, even if the cost of that would be his very life.

Christ calls us to do the same, we are not merely called to love our significant others. We are not called to get overly attached to the warm and the fuzzies; rather, we are called to exhibit the very LOVE of God. We are called to invite and to let go. We are called to guide and to lead, as well as to step down and be led. We are called to love our neighbors, and even our enemies, as we love ourselves. There is nothing that falls outside the breadth of God’s unconditional and unquellable love. Know that you are loved and BE LOVE in the lives of others. If God is love, and you are in God, then you are LOVE too!

THOUGHT OF THE DAY

“Where there is love, there is life.” – Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

PRAYER

Lord, lead me ever deeper into a life of love. Amen.

Devotional

A Love That Lets Go

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Read Mark 6:1-12

ALSO IN SCRIPTURE
“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones God’s messengers! How often I have wanted to gather your children together as a hen protects her chicks beneath her wings, but you wouldn’t let me. And now, look, your house is abandoned and desolate.” (Matthew 23:37-38 NLT)

Letting GoHave you ever had to make decisions on behalf of someone you love that you really, really didn’t want to make? As a parent, there are times that I have had to make decisions that had eaten me alive in the process of making them. For anyone who has been a parent, or has been responsible for someone else, you probably know exactly what I am talking about. Ever parent wants their kids to love them, every parent longs for their children to look up to them, to respect them, but also be close to them. The problem is that, by virtue of having the responsibility of parenthood, there are times that parents have make decisions, and take certain courses of action, in order to do what is right for their children…BECAUSE THEY LOVE THEM. Those decisions often come with consequences, such as the children not “liking” their parents and/or feeling sorry for themselves, which can only go to make the parent feel even worse for having to make the dreaded decision. With that said, it was the RIGHT thing for the parent to do.

One of the hardest thing for parent to do, one of the things that goes against a parent’s very fiber, is the decision and the act of letting their child go. In fact, that is not just a hard thing for parents to do, is it? That seems to be a universally hard thing for many people to do. Whether they are parents, siblings, family, or friends, it is hard for people to let the ones they love go; however, there are times when LOVE demands that one do just that. This perhaps is the most painful, and yet the most radically profound, act of love.

Letting go is an act of love that God knows very well. After all, God created this world and all that is in it, and God did so out of love. In that love, God created human beings in order to have a relationship with them. God gave them everything and tried to guide them to a life that was good for them; however, out of love God also gave them the freedom to choose and boy did humanity choose…not God, but themselves. So God let them go; God let them make their choices, regardless of whether they were good or bad.

That’s not to say that God completely stepped away, because God did try and intervene in order to get people to remember their relationship with their Creator. God even sent God’s own son in order to show people how much God loved them, yet the people either didn’t understand it, or they chose to reject it. That was their choice and, in that choice, God let them go. Even when they chose to torture, whip, and crucify God’s Son, God chose to let them go. Why? Why would God do such a thing? Because God loved humanity that much that God was willing let them go.

While it is not easy, God is calling us to do the same. As much as we want to control the relationships we are in, as much as we want everyone to love us and to understand how much we love them, as much as we want our relationships to remains strong and happy, the reality is that some will inevitably deteriorate and fall apart. We should try to mend those relationships if possible, we should try to reconcile ourselves with our family, friends and neighbors (if at all possible and regardless of whether we were in the right or wrong); however, if the door to reconciliation continually comes swinging shut, at some point we need to love the person and/or the people enough to let them go. Why? Because love demands that we do. Because in love for us, God has let us go. Letting someone go does not mean giving up on them, it simply means that you love them enough to let them choose to love, or not love you…no matter how painful that is. This Lent, I pray that, in those necessary moments, God gives you the grace and the strength to express your love for others through the act of letting them go.

THOUGHT OF THE DAY
“Some of us think holding on makes us strong; but sometimes it is letting go.” – Hermann Hesse
PRAYER
Lord, help me to know when it is time to hold on and when it is time to let go of the ones I love. Give me the strength to do so. Amen.

Devotional

Beyond the ‘L’ Word

Leave a comment

Read John 14:11-21

ALSO IN SCRIPTURE

“Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.” (1 John 4:8)

QuoteIn our culture, we often romanticize what love is, do we not? When we hear the word “love”, we often think of bouquets of flowers, long walks along the shoreline in the moonlight, and romantic gondola rides through Venice. We often think of warm candlelight, nights with a loved one by the fireplace, and all of the warm and fuzzies that make our hearts flutter at the sound of “love.”

How can we help having such an image? Our culture is constantly feeding us with this understanding of love. Our supermarkets and bookstores are lined with romance novels, magazines with tips on having a better love life, cards that tell your significant others how much you love them and many other things that paint this particular picture of love. We are inundated with love songs that fill the radio airwaves and our mp3 players. Just try and find a song on the radio that is NOT about romantic love. They exist, but they are definitely hard to find. Romance also shows up in movies where characters are “in love” with people as well as monsters such as vampires, werewolves and, if you can believe it, even zombies.

If you were a visitor from another planet and you were trying to understand our language, you would come to the conclusion the word “love” mostly means “romance. Yet does that sufficiently describe the word love? Is romance all there is to the word love, or does love extend far beyond that particular definition. I am sure most, if not all, people know the answers to those questions; however, when love plays out in different ways in our lives we often don’t recognize it for the love that it is.

When I was a teenager, my parents loved me by not allowing me to do EVERYTHING I ever wanted to do. The loved me by not always letting me have my way. The loved me by allowing me to make mistakes and suffer the consequences. They loved me by holding me accountable to the expectations the set of me. They also loved me by letting me go to experience the world on my own terms. That last one is, perhaps, the hardest love for a parent to exhibit. Letting go, holding people accountable, allowing people to make their choices and reap the consequences, and saying “no” to people, often does not sound or feel like love. Yet, depending on the circumstances, it can and often is a form of love!

When Jesus called Peter to love and feed his sheep, he was not calling him to romance; however, he was calling him love in a much more profound and powerful way. He was called to love people as a brother, as a friend, and as a parent; however, Peter was also called to love beyond those classifications as well. He was called to love as GOD LOVES. He was called to invite those who wished to be invited and let go those who wished to be let go. He was called to guide and to lead; however, he was also called to step down and be led. He was called to live a life that brought hope, healing and wholeness to others, even if the cost of that would be his very life.

Christ calls us to do the same, we are not merely called to love our significant others. We are not called to get overly attached to the warm and the fuzzies; rather, we are called to exhibit the very LOVE of God. We are called to invite and to let go. We are called to guide and to lead, as well as to step down and be led. We are called to love our neighbors, and even our enemies, as we love ourselves. There is nothing that falls outside the breadth of God’s unconditional and unquellable love. Know that you are loved and BE LOVE in the lives of others. If God is love, and you are in God, then you are LOVE too!

THOUGHT OF THE DAY

“Where there is love, there is life.” – Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

PRAYER

Lord, lead me ever deeper into a life of love. Amen.