This year, I'd like to talk about two aspects of love. What came to me, as I tried to prepare for this morning, is that there is a graciousness to love, and there is also a grittiness about it. Graciousness, and grittiness. I think that these help to define what our love is like, and show how it's expressed in our community. By graciousness , I mean that love is something free, and undeserving.
Love has to do with giving.
It isn't something that we barter, or sell. Love has to do with overflowing, with caring without limit, with not measuring our response or asking whether the other person deserves our love. When we experience God's love, we experience it as unlimited and unconditional . That basic, childlike, primal experience we have of God is of someone who loves us. In a lot of other areas in my life, I'm used to measuring my response.