What Love Is Series

That’s what true love looks like, because that’s the kind of love God has for us. He never gives up on us. “The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.” 2 Peter 3:9

Love never gives in.

Love never stops.

Love sees the disfiguring nature of sin in our lives – but it doesn’t matter - because love does NOT see others as they are… it sees them as they can be

CLOSE: In his book "Mortal Lessons" Richard Selzer (a surgeon wrote about the following event:

I stand by the bed where a young woman lies, her face postoperative, her mouth twisted in palsy, clownish. A tiny twig of the facial nerve, the one to the muscles of her mouth, has been severed. The surgeon had followed with religious fervor the curve of her flesh; I promise you that. Nevertheless, to remove the tumor in her cheek, I had cut the little nerve.

Her young husband is in the room. He stands on the opposite side of the bed, and together they seem to dwell in the evening lamplight, isolated from me, private. Who are they, I ask myself, he and this wry mouth I have made, who gaze at and touch each other so generously, greedily? The young woman speaks.

"Will my mouth always be like this?" she asks.

"Yes," I say, "it will. It is because the nerve was cut."

She nods, and is silent. But the young man smiles.

"I like it," he says. "It is kind of cute."

All at once I know who he is. I understand, and I lower my gaze. One is not bold in an encounter with a god. Unmindful, he bends to kiss her crooked mouth, and I am so close I can see how he twists his own lips to accommodate to hers, to show her that their kiss still works.

That’s how God love us.

He sees our disfigured lives and loves us anyway.

And that’s how we ought to love each other.

But it’s hard to love in that way until you first know the love that God has for you. That’s why we offer an invitation at the end of every service…