This morning in church I’m talking/teaching/speaking/blathering about “LOVE.” Love is the third of the Advent candles, and the focus of the coming week’s readings in my Advent book.

LOVE is one of the most misunderstood and misappropriated words in the English vocabulary. The Greeks had four words for it, which helped a little, but it would take more than that to help the confused among us who have no trouble with “I LOVE pizza,” “I LOVE my truck,” and “I LOVE the _________ (insert favorite football team here),” but who can’t muster the courage to say “I LOVE you” to their kids, or their wife, or their God.

Obviously, there’s a lot to cover. But at the foundation of everything I plan on sharing is the concept of love as covenant.

Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.  Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates. (Deuteronomy 6)

• Love God as a decision;
• Write the choice on your heart;
• Make sure your children own it too;
• Keep this love of God as an active part of all your conversation;
• Love like you mean it.

LOVE IS A CHOICE: Everything we understand about love in the Bible comes out of the principle that love is, first and foremost, a choice; that it is a series of choices rooted in commitment; that it is never self-serving; and that it always builds up.

“The power of love,” and I’m quoting from In My Heart I Carry A Star here, “is the same power that creates… Evil can only tear down and destroy, but love builds.”

I believe that “love builds up” is a crucial marker for authentic love. God is in the creation and re-creation business, and relationships that tear down have nothing to do with the “light and life” standard that is always part-and-parcel of our identity as followers of the Living Way of Jesus.

THE OPPOSITE OF FEAR: I invested some time this week doing a little research, and I came across this gem of a quote attributed to Balzac: “The more one judges, the less one loves.”

After I wrote it down, I tried to take an inventory of myself to measure how often and how far I stray from the path of love. What I noted was troubling, because – even in casual conversation – I often find judgementalism leaking into my thoughts and expressions.

Then I thought about the following scripture: “There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love” ( 1 John 4:18).

I remembered that love is the antidote to fear, that fear is so often what lies behind judgment, and that fear is a close relative of ignorance too.

Love as a choice gives us the power to live outside of fear. What Jesus teaches me about love puts me in a strong position, both in my relationships and in the way that I engage the world. When we live in love, then we have nothing to fear, and we have everything to gain when we make the choice to live as active agents of the Jesus kind of love.

In love, and because of love – DEREK