All You Need Is Love
“…faith, hope, and love abide, these three. But the greatest of these is love.”
—
We have a holy opportunity. Daily, God offers an eternal gift absolutely essential for our lives. We call it love, and participating in it connects us to eternity right here and now. Even the Beatles, the great band of the 1960’s and early 70’s, had the sacred sense of love’s power in their immortal 1967 song, All You Need Is Love. The title says it all.
What the Bible Says: From the Bible’s much earlier and more profound perspective, regardless of our level of success, how great we look, the cool company we keep, the impressive humility we display, if we don’t have love, we have nothing; we are nothing. In fact, we are missing the whole point of human existence, the whole reason God gifted us with our lives in the first place. The Psalmist said it this way: “… the steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting” (Psalm 103:17).
Without Love: In I Corinthians 13, the Apostle Paul equates life without love to a noisy gong or a clanging symbol: loud but useless; attention-getting but good for little else. In other words, what’s the point in living if you’re not willing to trust in the power of God’s love?
With Love: In the Sanctuary sermon yesterday, I said “love is God’s superpower in human lives.” And while this repeatedly has proven to be true for those wise enough to claim it, lives with love fully lived continue to be far more rare than God desires.
Love As Fire: Pierre Chardin was a French anthropologist and strong Christian. As an anthropologist, he learned that civilizations tended to wax and wane. Humans made discoveries, progress, and mistakes.
As a Christian, he understood the gift of God’s love, the power it conveyed, and where it came from. He shares these words with God’s superpower in mind:
Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides, and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, we will have discovered fire (Pierre Teilhard de Cardin).
To finally get it right, finally to understand and to live out the blessedness of love, is the ultimate calling of every person. Just as the discovery of fire revolutionized the ancient world, the fire of today—the love of God alive in us—changes everything.
Today, begin small; take the fire of God’s love in your heart and mind, and start a gentle revolution in your own spot: your home, your office, your neighborhood, your school. Just a spark will do it. This is God’s superpower alive in you and me. We all have it readily available.
Therefore, love someone in an unexpected way, start a fire, tenderly fan the flames, and see what happens. All you need is love!
Music from Our Children and Youth: The Decatur Avondale Children’s Choir rocks! If you haven’t a chance to experience our Sanctuary Worship Service yesterday, you need to hear these children. Grades K-12, singing in four different languages (English, Xhosa, Hebrew and Latin), these children and young people lifted our spirits and gave us numerous glad moments of delight. If you’ve ever thought young kids couldn’t sing with skill or remain attentive for long enough to learn the words and music to complicated songs, sharing in this time of worship will impress you with the power of these young voices and the incredible skill our own Mark Green has in bringing out the very best in these fine young people from our community.
Love,
David
David Jordan
Senior Pastor