What can I say about love? I am speechless before the word, knowing that it is the center God's call for me and not the center of my life. There are a few things and people I really love. Take Tim and Taza (my two blonde sleeping beauties), for example. But Jesus says, “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even 'sinners' love those who love them” (Luke 6). The call is to love the unlovely- the people who get on my nerves, the ones who seem dangerously dirty, the very ones trying to take advantage of me just because I have white skin.

The calls to love God and love my neighbors are intrinsically and irrevocably linked. The commands in Hebrew (from Deut. 6:5 and Lev. 19:18) begin with the same word, which for the Jews was (is?) extremely significant (particularly since the word is unique to these two commands). Jesus calls these the most important laws of the 613 listed in the Torah and says that every other command is based on these 2. Makes you wonder how those laws about mildew fit in, right?

Our speaker last week suggested that perhaps God intended the second command to be the answer to the question posed by the first. How do we love the Lord our God with everything we've got? By loving our neighbors as ourselves. If we want to grow in our love for God, we've got to start giving ourselves away. Maybe God can't (well, won't) take us higher or deeper until we go wider.

Today that means being more willing to share Taza with Joni and baking a birthday cake for a friend, not only as a gift to him but also to relieve Miriam and Lula of the work since they're busy with life plus a wedding (my host brother Diego is getting married Saturday). What else could it mean, big or small? I want to keep my eyes open for the possibilities.

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