“We know we have passed from death to life, because we love each other.” (1John 3:15 NIV)
It turns out that love is the evidence of real life change: when we stop living out death and start living out love instead.
I’m thinking about my mom today. It’s her birthday and I want to celebrate with her. It’s hard to believe she’s been gone six full years already. So much has happened and I’d love to tell her all of it. She’d be up for it. Mom always had time for a story, she was ever-ready for a discussion. I miss the story-telling. I miss the way her heels clicked against the floor when she walked across the room. I miss the light in her eyes when she laughed – which was often and infectious. I miss the way she’d call and ask “What’s on the docket today?” like I was someone doing something far more important than laundry and dishes, something that needed to be recorded for posterity’s sake.
This verse reminds me of her. My mom is still alive in me because she loved so very well. Her legacy lives on because love framed out her every day. If her life had a to-do list it would have read ‘love’.
When we learn to love, we pass from death to life. Let that sink in. We may physically die, as my mom has, but the love we proffered lasts. It transcends the expiration of our earthly bodies. What’s more: Christ’s love connects us to heaven and one day all that love will bring us back around again, together and sustained by affection forever.
Author and preacher, Levi Lusko, lost his five year old daughter to an asthma attack. He writes of Lenya, his little girl, being just around an unseen corner in heaven. She holds a hand with Jesus. He reminds the reader, we can grab hold of Jesus’ other hand, here on earth, and thus remain connected with our loved one in heaven.
Love is how we learn to hold hands. Love is how we receive Jesus and love is how we reflect Him back into this broken world. Love is how we participate in the salvation process; our own and others alike. Love is how we stay in relationship; with God and others. Love is how we change the world and love is how we live forever.
“Three things will last forever – faith, hope and love – and the greatest of these is love.” (1 Corinthians 13:13 NLT)
Lord, today I thank You for the legacy of my mother. I thank You for the Kingdom woman she was, living out love in each and every corner of her world. I thank You for the bright hope of heaven, shining through this overcast day. I ask that love would pour through my life as effectively as it did my mothers; that I, too, would pass from death to life, transformed by love. Let her legacy live on in me and be passed on to my children and their children after them. Mark our family forever by love. Be made famous through our affection for others. Amen.