Different Versions, Different Readings, Same Meaning

Reading Romans 12:9 in different versions:

KJV:  Let love be without dissimulation.

NKJV:  Let love be without hypocrisy.

NLT:  Don't just pretend to love…

ESV:  Let love be genuine.

They all tell a story.  They all paint a canvas.  The question is:  can we do any of it?

Giving a timeless gift

"The most timeless gifts are peace and love."
~Alexander Breskin

Loving from your brokenness, not your greatness

I loved the title of the book, Everybody's Normal Till You Get to Know Them, so I picked up the book.  I identified with the title.  Maybe other people don't…they are 'normal.'  But, I was surprised to even learn something about love:

"We think of people having the capacity to love who have mostly gotten life right - healthy people with high self-esteem and low regret factors.  Normal people.
There is no such thing, dear.  Jesus says the great lovers are those who have come face-to-face with their own great brokenness and have been undone by great grace."  (page 211, John Ortberg)

Be undone by great grace today to be enabled to love more fully.

How Much is Enough?

This is what a son said at his father's memorial service:

"Immortality has nothing to do with how long you live, but in how much love you give." 
~Cory Booker~

Well said.  Can we measure love?  I think not, but we can so fill the other person with it, that they will feel loved.  That is our task.

The Worst Thing

John Ortberg reminds us it is not just moral failures that decry us, but our lack of love.  He concludes that "the greatest crimes against the kingdom of God are crimes against love."
(Everybody's Normal Till You Get to Know Them, p. 127, 128)

It's a good reminder that the greatest harm we do to others and ourselves is to withhold love.

The Greatest Gift

Ann Voskamp in her delightful Advent book, The Greatest Gift, says:

"Love is the greatest thing God can give us, for Himself is love," writes 17th Century theologian Jeremy Taylor.  "And [love] is the greatest thing we can give to God, for it will also give ourselves…"

(page 92)

Lacking Love Leads to Sin

"Just as love is the ultimate expression of the law, so lovelessness is the ultimate expression of sin."
(page 60, John Ortberg, Everybody's Normal Till You Get to Know Them)

Do you not know enough about love, so you make it up?

Because of Who He is, Not Because of Who We Are

"God loves people because of who God is, not because of who we are."
NIV Stewardship Study Bible, page 236

Protect & Touch & Greet

"Love consists in this, that two solitudes protect and touch and greet each other."
Rainer Maria Rilke

Incapable

Jean Vanier, in her book, Community and Growth, reminds us:  "While we are alone, we could believe we loved everyone.  Now that we are with others, living with them all the time, we realize how incapable we are of loving."  (page 26)

Community as Sign Pointing to Love

"A community is never there just for itself or for its own glory.  It comes from and belongs to something much greater and deeper:  the heart of GOd to bring humanity to fulfillment.  A community is never an end in itself; it is but a sign pointing further and deeper, calling people to love."  Jean Vanier
(from Community and Growth, p. 102)