“You can have the sound of a thousand voices calling your name…” sang Shinedown; the song continued, “The one thing you leave behind is how did you love?”
Paul tells us “I could speak in the tongues of mortals or of angels, but if I have not love, I am just a noisy gong” (1 Corinthians 13:1) Love is mentioned 13 times in today’s passage encouraging us to love one another as God has loved us and because God has loved us from before we came to love him. So how do we love? Do we offer comfort to the bereaved? Hope to those in despair? Welcome to the stranger? Food to the hungry? Voice to the silent? Do we seek to be rewarded for the love we offer or do we love because we cannot help ourselves. Victor Hugo once said “You can give without loving, but you cannot love without giving”. God’s love is all encompassing and was present even before we realised it. He gave without counting the cost when he sent his son for us. How can we respond but with love for all without the need for the spotlight, or secret agenda of payback when needed. Love should be unconditional, absolute and available to all. God has shown us how, and, as Isaac Watts reminds us “love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all”