Cultivate Love
I have dreams of a big, beautiful garden. I think often about the flowers and vegetables I want to plant, and the perennials that will provide color all throughout the year. But I’ve been wanting this garden for over two years now. Planning alone doesn’t make it a reality. It takes a whole lot of work to make the plans happen. You need to prepare the soil, plant, water, and pull weeds. But the result is a harvest of beautiful flowers, fruit and veggies.
And so it is with love. We can’t just talk about it. We have to DO love! We have to work at it! It takes effort to create a culture of love.
One can hardly talk about love without mentioning the “Love Chapter”–1 Corinthians 13. Love is patient, kind, humble, selfless, gracious, truthful, and forgiving. It believes all things, hopes all things, and never gives up! This is quite a list!
I think of another list that describes love.The fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control (Galatians 5: 22 – 23). The fruit of the Spirit is what love should look like. To cultivate this fruit, we must practice these things!
When love is new, it sounds all too easy! But then, not too long afterwards, we realize just how hard it can be to really love like this! It’s challenging to always be patient and kind even when things irritate us. It’s exhausting to consistently have a heart that is gracious and humble and wants to forgive even before it is asked for.
And just like in a garden, we must be diligent to pluck out the weeds–anything that minimizes or dulls love. 1 Corinthians 13 also gives us a list of weeds–envy, boasting, arrogance, rudeness, selfishness, irritability, and harboring grudges. Rejoicing at wrongdoing, giving up, being resentful and shortsighted are weeds that need to be pulled out by the roots!
But what I love most about love is that is never gives up! When the garden doesn’t yield what it was supposed to–hope for–you don’t just shrug your shoulders and walk away! That would make a bigger mess later on and a whole lot more work! You keep tilling the ground, adding fertilizer, watering and pulling weeds. You pamper it until it produces the fruit you’ve been hoping and planning for!
And so it is with our love. When love disappoints, we need to work hard! Don’t give up! Hope for the best! Believe it will overcome!
Lord, may I love as You love. You didn’t wait until we were perfect before You loved us. You showed us love even while we had our backs to You. You gave us the BEST example of love. Give me the strength and courage to DO love well.
