practical love

“I got a request from switchboard this week,” Pastor’s wife told us Sunday morning, “to give Sylvia a call. She would really appreciate hearing from someone because she hasn’t been able to be in church for years.

“So I called her and sure enough. Because of illness, she hasn’t been able to attend church since October of 2004. But as she talked and went on and on: ‘I love it when on Sunday morning you talk to us from your heart. And I love the worship and when the missionaries come, and the flag parade...’ I grew puzzled. I thought she hadn’t been in church. So I asked her, ‘You watch the service on the internet?’

“‘No,’ Sylvia says, “I don’t have that.’

“Then how do you know what’s happening in such detail?

“‘Oh,’ Sylvia told me, ‘Every Sunday Olive goes to the first service. Then right after, she comes over here and tells me everything!’”

What a great introduction to pastor’s talk on living a life of practical love. Pastors Brent and Carrina introduced his sermon “Love in Action III” with couple of excerpts from Mother Teresa’s book No Greater Love.

One of them went something like this (a quote from Mother Teresa’s book Heart of Joy):

At the time of death, when we meet God face-to-face, we will be judged concerning love, concerning how much we have loved. Not concerning how much we have accomplished, but rather how much love we have put into what we have done.

In order for love to be genuine, it has to be above all a love for my neighbor. Love for my neighbor will lead me to true love for God..

And said another way from Pastor’s text: 1 John 3:16,17 (The Message):

This is how we’ve come to understand and experience love: Christ sacrificed his life for us. This is why we ought to life sacrificially for our fellow believers, and not just be out for ourselves. If you see some brother or sister in need and have the means to do something about it but turn a cold shoulder and do nothing, what happens to God’s love? It disappears. And you made it disappear.

("Love In Action III" on streaming video.)

tags: love, church, Mother Teresa, Bible