I wanted to take a moment to talk about something that was written to me yesterday. Something that we are all guilty of saying to one another in an attempt to be comforting. I am not clowning the person who said it because I have been known to say it myself. Essentially someone said that as long as I know God loves me, and I am ok loving myself, that is all I really need to move on and happily live my life. You know that really sounds good when we say it. But it is not true. Not even the Creator believes that line.
We were created out of love. We were created so that God could feel love returned to Him. We also look for love to be returned to us by the children we create. It was God who first said that it is not good for man to be alone and since God does not speak of that which He himself has not first experienced, then, surely, we were created so that God would not have to be alone. So if God could confess to the need of love from another outside of Himself, then it is clear that a love for only ourselves and for God is not sufficient for a fulfilling human existence.
There is an old Sunday school song taken from the words of Christ that I remember singing as a child:
“This is my commandment that ye love one another that your joy may be full.
This is my commandment that ye love one another that your joy may be full.
That your joy may be full.
That your joy may be full.
This is my commandment that ye love one another that your joy may be full.”
Love is the only reason we live this life. Although we often fail to practice it as well as we speak it, the common theme of every faith on Earth is love. For God so loved. When we are told to forsake not the fellowshipping of ourselves together, it has nothing to do with preachers and church services, spending hours on end singing songs to God. It is about this very kind of fellowship that we share daily- even here and now, not needing scripture, or a man in a robe to tell us what God’s spirit in us alone is more than capable of allowing our hearts to share and encourage and lift up between us.
Yes, I have been richly blessed by God with a knowledge and wisdom and a heart to give to others. But even Jesus needed his Gethsemane- a place to retreat to be ministered by the love of his brother angels. Likewise, I am not so proud or think too much of myself to open my spirit to be ministered by you. Inasmuch as so many of you tell me the difference my words have made in your lives, it is your love for me, and your prayers, and the sacrifice of your strength to me even in the midst of your own struggles that make a difference in mine.
I am not ashamed to admit that I could not do this without you. Yes I love God. Yes I have, as Paul the Apostle also wrote “learned that whatever state I am in, therein to be content.” But I also heed to the wise words Nat King Cole immortalized in song that “the greatest thing, you’ll ever learn, is just to love, and be loved, in return.” -NEO BLAQNESS