|
|
by Rev. Fr. V.V. Paulose, Toronto, Canada
"Dear children, let us not love with words or tongues but with actions and in truth." (1 John 3:18)
Have you ever experienced the sweetest joy in life? LOVE!
If not, then let’s understand it now. Love is more than the meanings given in dictionaries. The American Heritage dictionary defines love as “an intense affection for another person based on familial or personal ties”. This love is based on conditions and emotions. The wedlock based on conditions and emotions ends to quit the vow of “till in death do us apart” - ‘a death of love’, its not physical death, but the divorce.
There are 3 types of love - romantic love, brotherly love, and divine love (Agape in Greek). Divine love is without any recompense. It’s fathomless, non-perceivable but it’s definitely a feeling one can and should experience. God loves because He is love. "For God loved the world so much that he gave his one and only son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life." (John 3:16). This love overlaps death.
It is a challenge to show love in action as Christ did it on the cross, unlike the inactions as the world does. Whom do we follow, Christ or the practical world? Are we as generous as we should be with our money, possessions and time?
The great Genome scientist Collins with his college daughter, travelled to Nigeria in 1989 as a volunteer doctor in a mission hospital to contribute something to the poor patients. The hospital had no facilities, not even an x-ray machine. One of the patients was a young farmer who had accumulated fluid in the pericardial sac around his heart which could choke off his circulation resulting in death. With his heart in his mouth and a prayer on his lips, Dr. Collins did a risky procedure of drawing off the pericardial fluid with a large bore needle placed in the chest. The patient responded favorably.
During his routine rounds the next day, ne noticed that the farmer was reading his Bible. The patient asked the doctor whether he had been working at the hospital for a long time. When he said that he was new to the place, the patient replied, "I got the feeling that you were wondering as to why you came here, and I have the answer for that. You came here for one reason. You came for me."
The doctor was stunned and told him that he was in harmony with God's will, and bonded together with the young man in a most unlikely but marvelous way. Nothing he had learned from science could explain that experience. According to him it's Agape. It’s the love that seeks no recompense. It is beyond materialism, and it is the sweetest joy that one can experience.
Love is supernatural; those who love are not mere humans, but God in flesh. Let’s walk on this earth with love and love alone.
Jesus, thank you for your unexplainable love. Let’s live in love. We pray for those who are unloved and abandoned. Let your angels in human form, be the love for them. We ask in the name of Jesus.
Amen
Yesterday | Today with Jesus Archives | Next
Library - Home | Baselios Church Home
-------
Malankara World
A service of St. Basil's Syriac Orthodox
Church, Ohio
Copyright © 2009-2020 - ICBS Group. All Rights Reserved.
Disclaimer
Website designed, built, and hosted by
International Cyber Business Services, Inc., Hudson, Ohio
