Choose Love
0 comments | Posted by Steven Layson on 14 Oct 2007 in From Steve's Study ::
Love is slippery kind of thing. Everybody seems to want it. Songwriters and poets seem to be obsessed by it. And yet it seems to be so elusive – people fall in and out of love all the time.
Despite this, Jesus tells Christians to “love one another”. But how can we do that when we don’t feel like loving? Is it necessary to feel love to truly love?
I read a story recently of an American Newspaper Columnist and Minister George Crane who tells the story of a wife who came into his office full of hatred toward her husband. “I do not only want to get rid of him, I want to get even. Before I divorce him, I want to hurt him as much as he has me.”
Dr. Crane suggested an ingenious plan “Go home and act as if you really love your husband. Tell him how much he means to you. Praise him for every decent trait. Go out of your way to be as kind, considerate, and generous as possible. Spare no efforts to please him, to enjoy him. Make him believe you love him. After you’ve convinced him of your undying love and that you cannot live without him, then drop the bomb. Tell him that your’re getting a divorce. That will really hurt him.” With revenge in her eyes, she smiled and exclaimed, “Beautiful, beautiful. Will he ever be surprised!” And she did it with enthusiasm. Acting “as if.” For two months she showed love, kindness, listening, giving, reinforcing, sharing. When she didn’t return, Crane called. “Are you ready now to go through with the divorce?”
“Divorce?” she exclaimed. “Never! I discovered I really do love him.” Her actions had changed her feelings.
Love is not a feeling (though it is often accompanied by feelings), it is a choice. Love is something we choose to do to another. And so the apostle John tells us, “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us”. Jesus chose to love us and demonstrated that love by giving his life for us. As a result, “we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers” (1 Jn 3:16). And again, “let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth” (3:18).
So let us choose to love one another.
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