#first commandment

1.06 | The First Commandment

If someone with a cardboard sign is asking me for money, the only way I can do that is if I first have some money.

Because you can’t give what you don’t have.

It’s a universal truth. The kind that seems super obvious when you say it. Almost like I’m insulting your intelligence when I point it out.

And yet, there are so many areas of our lives where the way that you and I do things? It’s like we’ve never heard this one before.

This is the dynamic that’s behind what Jesus is saying in today’s Gospel, when He says,

"You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment.

The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself."

Loving your neighbor is no small thing. Because it’s exactly how our faith is supposed to play out in our lives. That is what you and I are called to do, if we’re really followers of Christ.

But let’s be clear – loving your neighbor isn’t some mushy sentiment. Because love isn’t a feeling. Love is a choice. As St. Thomas Aquinas tells us, “To love is to will the good of the other.”

But loving your neighbor can be hard.

Willing the good of the other – who lets their dog do it on my lawn and leaves it there? Willing the good of the other – when their backyard cookouts make the block smell like burning tires? Willing the good of the other – with that super-special [something I hate] flag on their front porch?

I don’t know about you, but I don’t have that kind of love. Not on my own.

And yet, Jesus is calling me to love my neighbor, to love that neighbor, as myself.

Where am I going to get that kind of love? Because I can’t give what I don’t have.

That is what the first half of what Jesus is saying, the first commandment, is all about.

If I love God with all my heart, with all my soul, and with all my mind? God will do things His way, by paying me back in kind, a thousand-fold. Here’s what I mean.

God already loves you more than you know (see Good Friday for details). But when you start trying to love God back, when you take that first faltering step of loving God, God lights up and says, “Game on!”

Because you and I can’t love God without God paying us back in kind, a thousand-fold.

And our dixie cup of love for God will be met by God with horse trough after pond after lake after ocean of love until we literally cannot contain it - and God’s love overflows into every area of our lives and into the lives of everyone we meet. Even our neighbor.

But it all starts with loving God. Because you can’t give what you don’t have.

‘I have a soft spot for the fringe lunatic’ and how black ops specifically pick ‘em for that reason.

Also her need to heal the emotionally damaged? *insert pop up picture of Charlie here*

Originally posted on November 2, 2018

“ ‘And you shall love THE LORD your God with your whole heart and with your entire soul and with your entire mind and with all your power.' This is the first commandment.”