Tuesday 12 December 2023

Practising love

 


Matthew 22:37-40

Jesus said to him, “ ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”


It often seems easier to love what we don’t know

than to love what we know

To love our neighbour and to love God

can be abstract endeavours 

that we manage with a modicum of success

-or so we imagine.

Loving ourselves?

That calls into play a whole other set of skills

-skills that may have atrophied from lack of use

Skills that are honed and developed from seeds deep within

muscle memory waiting to be revived.

Rekindling love for self takes practice 

and disciplined effort for some

Effort that shows up - in how we love God

and in how we are enabled to see in every neighbour

the image of God.

Love God, love your neighbour, love yourself.


(Liz Crumlish)


3 comments:

  1. Didn’t mean to be Anonymous I am such a Luddite, Elaine xx

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  2. Guess everyone has to answer that for themselves. Even the Primus was ‘put aside’ for a ‘handout’ when he n his wife were homeless... oh how we look at externals .....mostly, yep it is sadly, mostly in ‘churches’ grinding their agenda. father Roland was a great annoyance to the Cathedral of the Isles with his postenia hut he build pretty roughly in their ‘nice’ grounds ....it didn’t fit the image. He would be a beggar on Princess Street to try and make people look at the face of poverty....very few did. I wonder what is happening with the Community of the Resurrection now he has passed to glory? He even became RC so they could call it an interdenominational community lol. I don’t want to leave my name on this post ...I’ll get hunted down ....Liz will know fine well who I am 😃 We now have Poverty Safari which details the grown anger of the ‘poor underclass’ in Scotland. Roland Wall was a modern mystic and a theology professor and a good laugh and a friend TO ALL....and that....is a very rare talent.

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