Saturday, May 21, 2005

What is Love?


Lenny Cacchio writes: It's all about ...

"Rick Warren begins his best selling book The Purpose Driven Life with a sentence worthy of our age: "It's not about you."

And it's not. God did not grant us life for the purpose of exalting ourselves. We are mere specks of dirt on a tiny planet circling a middling star on the edge of middling galaxy. When I gaze at the wonders of the night, I marvel along with the Psalmist: "When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars, which You have ordained, what is man that You are mindful of him?" (Psalm 8:3-4 NKJV)

Indeed, what could an all-powerful Being possibly see in us that He would "make Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross"? (Phil 2:6-9 NKJV)

Frankly, folks, I'm not worth that much, and I am certainly not worthy of being a co-heir with Christ. Neither am I worthy of being called a child of God, but that's exactly how the Book refers to us who accept God's gift of eternal life (Romans 8). If the Book means what it says, then as co-heirs we are to inherit everything that Jesus inherits, which is "all things" (Hebrews 2:10), including those stars I gaze at on those dark, crisp evenings. It is right to dream about galaxies far, far away, for God has put that desire in our hearts.

Even though He has the right to be called the I AM, He desires not to horde power and position and control to Himself, but instead has created the universe to share. It could be all about Him, but the Great Center of the Universe has decreed otherwise. By doing so, He made it all about us, but that only works if we make it all about Him. That dilemma is the real meaning of love."

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