How do you express your love for your brother, your sister? What does it mean to love?

Can we love anyone, or anything, apart from the grace and mercy of the Holy Spirit?

Love is listening, love is holding the moment as a moment of God’s, not ours. Love is dwelling in the face of despair with confidence that God is Almighty, everlasting, and Christ is our redeemer. Love is asking God to fill our moments and overflow our cups so He can pour out over his people. Love is physical, thoughtful, and direct. Love sees with Christ’s eyes and hears with Christ’s heart, and thinks with His mind. Love sleeps in protected dreams. This is how love transforms, as the anti-black hole, drawing each of us in more inexorably than we thought possible and revealing us as His new creation. Love is about Him, his magnificence, his holiness, his peace.  Love is life, generating community, creating the greatest truth moment to moment, love is the memory of Christ, the Holy Spirit’s opening our eyes to the Ebenezer’s of each day.

Love is the verb that acts out our trust, that directs our faith. Love is a bath of redeeming light, revealing our inadequacies and cleansing us with the purity of our Lord’s Spirit. The following are some scriptures that focus on the way that we love. 

How we love

you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.' The second is this, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these." and "to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the strength,' and "to love one's neighbor as oneself,'—this is much more important than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices." Mark 12

 When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, "Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?" He said to him, "Yes, Lord; you know that I love you." Jesus said to him, "Feed my lambs." A second time he said to him, "Simon son of John, do you love me?" He said to him, "Yes, Lord; you know that I love you." Jesus said to him, "Tend my sheep." He said to him the third time, "Simon son of John, do you love me?" Peter felt hurt because he said to him the third time, "Do you love me?" And he said to him, "Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you." Jesus said to him, "Feed my sheep. John 21

Grace, mercy, and peace will be with us from God the Father and from Jesus Christ, the Father's Son, in truth and love. But now, dear lady, I ask you, not as though I were writing you a new commandment, but one we have had from the beginning, let us love one another.6 And this is love, that we walk according to his commandments; this is the commandment just as you have heard it from the beginning—you must walk in it. 2 John 1

 By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments. For the love of God is this, that we obey his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome, 1 John 5

 Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor. Romans 12

with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, Ephesians 4 

 But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, and put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation. 1 Thessalonians 5 

 But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, Ephesians 4