March 16-You Are Loved

It’s the weekend! I hope your week has gone well and has been a productive one. Have you loved people more this week than last like Jesus told us to do? Remember it’s about building those relationships. 


When the religious leaders were trying hard to trick Jesus, one man who seemed to think the Teacher had understanding, asked him of all the laws, what was the most important one. 

(Remember, at that time, besides the 10 Moses had brought down from Mt Sinai, the Jews in all their wisdom had added another 603 more! Now I ask you, who can even remember 613 laws, much less keep them all?)


But our brilliant Jesus Messiah answered so beautifully, beginning with the Shema, the verse that every Jewish child could recite. It would be as if He recited John 3:16 today. 


““The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘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 mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”” Mark‬ ‭12:29-31‬ ‭NIV‬‬


I love how Jesus just wraps these up as one commandment saying that if we love the Lord our God completely, then we are going to love people. The reference in Matthew says that all the law and prophets hang on these commandments—it all about love. The religious rulers of the day depended on keeping their laws, thinking that would make God love them. They missed the point entirely. And yet, sometimes today, we can end up in the same rut if we aren’t careful. We can try so hard to live up to every dot and dash of our rule book that we can entirely miss the point. We want everyone to think highly of us yet, our real responsibility is to simply love people enough to just point them to their Father, our Father, the one who first loved us with that crazy, overwhelming, never ending love. That love we can’t earn and certainly don’t deserve. 


Father of love, thank you for making it so easy to trust you and follow you. Help us to love others around us a little more each week, especially those that may not be so easy to love. Give us the understanding to know they are lost and need to find their way back to you, just like we did. Show us how we can best make a clear path to you for them. We love you Lord and we will always sing your praises and give you all the glory because you first loved us. You are a great God and a good good Father. Amen and amen. 


Love you dear one,

Pam 

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