I can hear the sound of your mocking
I can hear your taunting
I can hear your questions echoing:

“Who is this Messiah?
Who is this Jesus and does he even exist?
I’ve seen your cathedrals,
I’ve heard the noise of your mock-offerings.
And still there is no proof.
Where are the miracles?
Where’s the hope?
Where are the wonders you love to boast of?”

To you, our response is this:
I am the hope
I am the miracle
I am living the awakening
This resurrection power lives in me
Hear my roar that my God is not dead
My God is not dead!

He is like a lion.

It seems useful to talk about love, and how to love, on this day dedicated to that sort of thing….

At the end of Matthew 22, a Pharisee comes to Jesus, intending to trick him, and rather un-loving asks:

³⁶“Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”

My guess is that he was not expecting the answer he was given:

³⁷Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ ³⁸This is the first and greatest commandment. ³⁹And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ ⁴⁰All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

This seems simple enough, and we’ve certainly heard about it enough times from Pastors, Sunday School, et cetera — but what does it really look like.

Scripture talks about this later, in Paul’s letter to the Corinthian church:

¹If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. ²If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. ³If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

⁴Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. ⁵It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. ⁶Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. ⁷It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

⁸Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. ⁹For we know in part and we prophesy in part, ¹⁰but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. ¹¹When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. ¹²For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

¹³And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

There are endless articles (books, as a matter) written, or to be written, on the topic of loving (and loving others). Consider this my small contribution to the library.