Kicking Love

Let’s talk/think about Love. 
There are so many versions of what love really is.
Hopefully we love our parents, our children because they are part of us, normally same skin, bones, and some touch of the same look.

Then there are our partners, husbands, wives, boyfriends, girlfriends, but those are rarely permanent. They come, they go, they surprise, they fall down, they become monsters that one didn’t anticipate, or they become weaklings that let us down. Some are sharp with finances,
some are thieves. Some drive carefully, others like to show off with speed and whirly curly things on the road. We often find out their real personalities, their likes, dislikes, the things hidden in their past, are not necessarily positives, and often horrific behaviors that somehow were crunched down in their pockets when they met us and wooed us and attacked us with some sort of love portion number one or nine. Personalities change with the shift of lifestyles and the needs to be powerful or motherly or egotistically abusive who cannot stay loyal. Where in the world does love crawl across the floor and bite you? It’s when you were not paying attention before it all happened. 

In the book of Jeremiah, we hear God tell Jeremiah that he formed him in the womb of his mother, as we all are formed in our mother’s womb and mostly, we are attached to the genes of the father, the husband, though sometimes there are unknown connections that we made to produce a child so they could be like everyone else - parents.  But God tells Jeremiah that in the womb He had appointed him to be a prophet to the nations. It was a privilege because God trusted this form of a man before he even had eyes or fingers in the womb.  And God explained to Jeremiah - or warned him - that He had a whole bunch of activities planned for him - whether boy or adult - and that Jeremiah would have to go to all to whom He would send him, and he should speak whatever words God gave him to say. Above all, God comforts, “Do not be afraid because I, God of all, will be beside you.” And immediately God touched the mouth of Jeremiah and said: “Now I have put my words in your mouth. See, today I appoint you over nations and over kingdoms, to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow to build and to plant.”

There were some strange challenges in this sentence. So, I can imagine as Jeremiah stepped out into the dusty streets around his probably fragile and small home, he had a task, and that task would grow and multiply as one aged, as one learned, as one encountered the different kinds of people and relationships in life. It is appropriate that in this same day of readings is a declaration about what Love is and is not. No matter what one’s task, one’s adventure, one’s summons, one’s challenge in life, there is one thing that is the most important part of humanity, of life, of the universe - and that is LOVE.  Then the author of Corinthians specifies what the vitality, the necessity of what Love is and is not.  

It doesn’t matter how many visions or prophetic powers one has, be they messages from God, or astrologists or healers, or interpreters, or teachers of miracles or evangelicals or predictors of what is to come because they had a dream - like our wonderful Martin Luther King - he had a dream - which he would not see, just like Moses was not allowed to enter the promised land, but Dr. King felt in his soul that things, after having been horrible and insulting and disgusting treatment of all kinds of colored people from all nations, how that would, one day, be torn apart as all people of any color would become equal with life, liberty and the pursuit of that happiness belonging to all. 

These few messengers of God were given the ability to speak to and for God just as spiritual gifts or charisms were extraordinary powers given by the Holy Spirit. These are supernatural graces which Christians need, and few have because they are gifts to individual Christians for the good of others and are not the same thing as graces given for personal sanctification. Charism means any good gift that flows from God’s benevolent love, such as increased faith, gifts of healing, of miracles, prophecy, discernments of spirit, interpretation of tongues, all given by the Holy Spirit to people needed to build up the church. A lot of these are natural abilities, not some speed-dial miraculous ones. Among the skills of these special people (who don’t always know they have these abilities) are celibacy, fellowship, hospitality, intercession, witnessing, marriage, even craftsmanship, interpretation of dreams, and composing spiritual music, poetry, and prose. 

What we learn in Corinthians, is it doesn’t matter what kind of powers one has, whether it is prophetic powers, or understands all mysteries and the stars and the planets, and has all knowledge, and all the faith that one can cram in one’s mind and heart. None of is worth a penny if inside that person’s soul there is NO LOVE.  If we don’t have love - whether we have never encountered it nor even know what Love is or never heard the word, then “I am nothing.” We might feel we are generous because we have given lots of clothes to the homeless, or we donate big time to charity, and we fill the Christmas buckets with coins and checks, it doesn’t matter if I do not have, know, or feel love. Then I’m a loser, without goodness, without hope. Love is what it takes and it doesn’t matter if one is rich or poor, but by just having love’s intention, and it’s character in your soul, that’s what Christ wants and needs because real love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 

How many do you know would do that for you or me? How many do we know who think they act like some god above all, but when it comes to getting real, that so called attempt at love crumbles and that person has been false and faithless and not interested in the fate of others. We must at least give it a try. Try to care about others, try to cry for others, try to feel for others. Then one is on the right track - that of love. And on that track, when one arrives at the station, God will be there to embrace each of us.  Amen. 

 ~ Rev

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audrey@audreytaylorgonzalez.com
www.audreytaylorgonzalez.com