What is it?
How does it behave?
What kinds of things
does it say?
What’s at the bottom
of it? Love, that is.
And how do I do anything-simple things- with all my heart and
soul, mind and strength? I’m just not that focused.
I’m distractable.
My heart’s like a
tossed salad.
And usually around
2:30 in the afternoon, my mind’s like a casserole. Noodle.
Love?
I know.
God
tells me everything I need to know about it. He really does, and I can read 1 Corinthians 13 like a recipe; but I need more
than that.
“I need more than
Your, ‘Love is…’ definition that was read at my wedding decades ago.” He nods
because He knows it’s true and, maybe, because He knows something
more-something that the kind of love He’s talking about needs if it’s going to
be possible.
“What is it?” I’m not
asking about love, but about what I need to do it the way He says. It’s beyond
me. Really beyond me.
“What is it?” I ask
again what I need to love the way He commands, and loves.
He begins to tell me
about when, after He rose from the grave, He watched His disciples casting
their net and drawing it up empty. He tells me how He called out to them, “Cast
your net to the other side of the boat,” and that when it filled with fish,
Peter jumped overboard and swam to shore because He knew it was Jesus. He tells me that He was waiting, with fish
cooking on the fire, to feed His fishermen and then to invite Peter to walk
with Him.
“Do you love Me?” He asked Peter.
I want Jesus to ask me
as many times as my heart needs, "Do you love me?” I want him to bring me
to the bottom of the question.
"What's at the
bottom?"
"I am." His
answer tells me what I need to love the way He commands.
Grace.
He is; so I may be
what only He is.
Grace.
He loves; so that I may
love as only He loves.
Grace.
He does; so that I may
do what only He can do.
What is it? What do I
need to love the way He commands?
His grace.
He is what
I’m not, and makes me what He is.
That’s what I need to love as He commands.
"Do you love
me?" His voice is tender low. He's fishing.
"I love
you." I answer as Peter did.
I want Him to keep
casting the question to the bottom of my heart.
“Do you love Me?” He
casts.
“I love You.” I want
Him to fill my heart as full of love as He filled the fishermen’s net with
fish.
“Do you love Me?” He’s
filling my heart.
“I love You.”
I want to wonder at
the fullness of my heart, as the fishermen wondered at the fullness of their
net. The net wasn’t broken; and I wonder if a heart full of love for Jesus is a
heart that won’t be broken.
I hear the second
commandment when He says, “Tend My sheep,” and “Feed My sheep.” I hear it, “Love
your neighbaah as yourself.”
Peter didn’t say the likes
of what I’ve heard said, “How can I love my neighbor as myself when there’s so
much I don’t love about myself?” Surely by then he knew the order of it-the grace.
In The Shepherd's
heart there is a fisher of men, and in the fisherman’s heart there is a shepherd
of sheep.
That’s what it is.
That’s what I need.
That’s His love.
written by: Carolyn-Elizabeth Roehrig
