The Only Thing That Counts

Have you ever looked at someone you have known for a long time and it feels like you are looking at them for the first time?  A familiar face when intimately studied, changes; especially one you have grown to love and "know."  Maybe it is because we take that face for granted when we see it.  I remember the first time I discovered this phenomenon.  I was in the car with my mother and I was in fifth grade.  If ever a face had been taken for granted by me, it was hers, until someone said they thought she was my sister.  "My mom?!" I thought.  Impossible!  So I took a close look and there behind that mom-ish facade was a person.  No kidding!  I remember just looking at her face in the light I imagined other people saw her and I think it was the first time I really took in her features- high cheekbones, dark eyes, really nice smile.  Mom.  And yet, not just Mom.  It was like she morphed right before my eyes.

God's Word has a tendency to morph in the same way.  It's familiar territory for me.  My eyes read the words sometimes with a half-effort.  "For God so loved..." Heard it before.  Yep.  Got it.  Gave His Son.  Moving on.  But if I stop and stare like it's my first time hearing, it is brand new to my heart and I feel pierced by what I have "heard" a hundred times.

The other day I read a post from Heart of the Shepherd on Facebook.  It was Galatians 5:6.  "The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love."  I stopped.  I stared.  I marveled.  All these times wondering about purpose, and what ifs, and how tos, and whys; melted into this one answer- "faith expressing itself through love."  Conviction is that moment where your heart feels wounded with truth and you search for a way to repair it.  I wondered how much my faith was actually displayed by love and I considered that it wasn't much.  Certainly not enough.

I love my children.  I love my husband.  I tell them everyday.  We kiss.  We hug.  We snuggle.  We are that kind of family.  And maybe because we are that kind of family, it is easy to have those acts of love be another motion that can get followed by a motion that is not so loving.  Anger, ungratefulness, grumbling, or just thoughtlessness.

The world talks about whirlwind romances as though they are the deepest form of love, but I tell you real love is slow and deliberate.  It's the stopping and staring and discovering.  It's that moment in Kroger when your cashier isn't just the obstacle between you and dinner getting on the table on time, but a lady with a family of her own... or maybe none at all.  Slow, deliberate examination.  It's the moment when the source of whining outbursts in the grocery store isn't a brat, but a real, little person struggling to learn that love isn't quantified in getting what we want and that's a lesson we all struggle to hold on to.  Love is discovering that desperation to be wanted, needed, and loved is often what leads the teenager to make undesirable choices.  That girl is not the choices that she has made, but the choice that you make to love her can be exactly what she needs to guide her to better decisions.

Love is deliberate.  Why do we treat it like it is spontaneous; a fleeting feeling that we struggle to maintain?  The way our society falls in and out of love speaks to a belief that love is something that bubbles up in spite of us, then spills out over time, and is gone as quickly as it comes.  We act like we don't have any control over this thing called love; that whether we feel loving toward a person is somehow outside of us, often dependent on how that person acts toward us.  We act like it is a current that sometimes sweeps us off our feet and other times heads us for the shore, leaving us feeling washed up and abandoned.

But the Bible tells us differently.  It is commanded, even demanded.  Like a mother requests her child to put on her shoes before stepping out the door, we are to "clothe" ourselves in love in the form of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience (Colossians 3:12).  Love is our Christian uniform.  We are required to wear it.  It is how we associate ourselves with our Lord and Savior.

Getting dressed in the morning is a deliberate act.  I can say this is especially true for me with a six week old baby that is regularly attached to me.  The Bible likens love to an act of dressing because it is a deliberate decision to wear love for the day.

Consider your day.  How much is swept away in a current of routine?  How much are your acts of faith simply tradition, rather than love?

"If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.  If 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 have not love, I am nothing."- 1 Corinthians 13:1-2

Faith without love is nothing.  The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.  Faith is a call to action; a deliberate decision to put on love, because if faith is not dressed up in love; it really isn't faith at all.