Something I’ve been trying to communicate to my kids lately is the dynamic properties of love. It seems that the world around us is simply saturated with sedentary love, by which I mean that society seems to think it’s acceptable to say “I love you” and leave it at that, as if that were an appropriate expression of love. We see it in relationships in every form, couples who do nothing for one another but expect love to thrive, parents who ignore their children but expect to make it ok with a statement like “You know I love you, right?” And this is supposed to be good enough, we’re supposed to accept that, and so the world goes insane because no one actually feels loved, they simply have some vague intellectual hope that it’s there.
As people who are supposed to live like Christ, we have to follow his example in love, and it’s impossible to justify this sort of sedentary love when we look at the life of Jesus. His whole life was built around moving and acting out of love. He spent his formidable years running in circles and talking to anyone who would listen because he wanted to show the love of God, and all this running peaked in his death for us as an ultimate act of love. So how then do we get away with sitting around and doing nothing?
How can anyone say “I love my brother” and do nothing for him? Love is not about words, feelings, and platitudes. No, love is about movement, action, fighting and strugguling. The essence of love itself is being willing to attempt the impossible for the wellbeing of those we claim to love. We must be ready to give up any and all of our desires for the sake of anyone else if we are to make the claim that we love.
Don’t be hollow, don’t stand still. Love. Move. Act. God moved for us and is still moving to show his love for us, shouldn’t we be trying to do the same? We must fight the desire to sit around and think that we’ve done enough. Love how you would like to be loved.
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