Love and Toast

When you befriend somebody, you should not do so lightheartedly. With relationship comes commitment. The inability to see it through leads to disappointment. I often see people who I know could do with a decent friend and yet I am afraid that in befriending too many people and spreading my love too far, I would be unable to love properly.

I suppose it comes back to whether you are the type of person who wants to be something to everyone or everything to someone. I fear that I am the former, but is that so bad?

Can love really be spread too far, or is the consistency of love stronger than that of butter being spread across toast? Toast is dry. People are not at all like toast.

People are loving creatures. Toast can exist without butter, but people cannot possibly exist without the love of another being unconditionally being bestowed upon them.

I therefore conclude that we should not restrict love. We ought to love all that we possibly can. After all, it is God’s love that is within us, so it is not for us to retain. God’s love can be like the manna that we read about in Exodus 16. God provides enough for each day. If we try to hold on to what we are given in an attempt to sustain ourselves, our effort will be in vain for we will be trusting in our own strength more than God’s promised provision.

So love. Love extravagantly!

1 John 4:7- 21 says it clearly and powerfully. The greatest commandment is to love.

^“7 Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. ⁸ Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. ⁹ This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. ¹⁰ This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. ¹¹ Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. ¹² No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.

¹³ This is how we know that we live in him and he in us: He has given us of his Spirit. ¹⁴ And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. ¹⁵ If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God,God lives in them and they in God. ¹⁶ And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.

God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. ¹⁷ This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In this world we are like Jesus. ¹⁸ There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.

¹⁹ We love because he first loved us. ²⁰ Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. ²¹ And he has given us this command: Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister.”