5 Easter (Mother's Day) May 10, 2009

Love is a decision, not a feeling. Love is a decision which may or may not involve our feelings. We are enabled to love because - and only because - God, and some other person or persons, created by God in God’s image, first loved us.

Babies are born cute and cuddly and totally selfcentered! If you don’t meet my needs when and as I experience them, I'll let you know about it in no uncertain terms. And I’ll keep it up until I am fed, changed, or burped. This is not only perfectly natural, its also totally necessary for my survival until I grow and develop enough to begin to meet some of my own needs. I begin to learn to love when my needs are met in loving, caring and consistent ways.

Real loving doesn't coddle me. Real loving gently pushes me to grow, to provide for my own needs as I become able, and to begin to consider the needs of others as well as my own. Jesus sets the bar for us when he tells us, "This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you." (Jn 15:12-14)

This is NOT warm fuzzies and goosebumps. You can't command feelings. In Marriage Encounter we teach that "A feeling is a spontaneous, inner reaction to a person, place, or situation." Feelings simply happen to us. We can't choose not to have them, and we can't choose to have them. What we can choose is how we will respond - or not respond to them by our actions. The key word here is "respond" - not a knee-jerk reaction, but a considered response - which seeks the good of all concerned, and especially the good of our neighbor.

Deciding to love, deciding to respond in loving, healing, and unifying ways, puts us in the position of being able to bear the fruit Jesus asks of us in our Gospel for today. Jesus speaks of himself as "the vine" and of us as "the branches". Branches take their character, their nourishment and their productivity from the vine of which they are a part. Wild and uncontrolled growth of the branches hurts the productivity of the vine; careful pruning of the branches directs their energy toward bearing fruit, and increases the productivity of the vine. But it all starts with the vine Jesus. Without him we can do nothing.

The current writer of Forward did it again this week on both Saturday and Sunday, which focus on the kind of love God calls us to in Christ Jesus. I close this morning with some of his words for Sunday, which comment on the Lesson from First John:

"Start with God, not with love, and let God define love. John says here that love is seen in that God "sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins." These words suggest that love is something God does, not something God feels. The word "sacrifice" further suggests that it is a giving up, a humbling, a dying. And the word "atoning" suggests that it brings together parties otherwise estranged.

"’We also ought to love one another,’ the text says. That means what characterizes God’s love for us should also characterize our love for each other. "God is love" is something we do; it is

giving up, our humbling of ourselves, our dying and uniting with those estranged from us. Are we doing "God is love"?

(Forward, Day by Day, May 10, 2009)