We love

We love because God first loved us. We love, We love, We love, because God first loved us. My children sang this scripture verse with the enthusiasm unique to young children after learning it one summer in Vacation Bible School. Greg's granddaughters have participated in several Spokane Vacation Bible School sessions this summer as Jenny has balanced work, her young family, her desire to be an extra set of hands for her mom, and her loving desire to be at her dad's side. She graciously set up this website to assist the family in sharing news on Greg. She has shared recent and rather rapid changes in Greg's strength. For the many months of this season Greg has faithfully participated in worship, lying in a back pew, soaking up songs of praise and words of promise. This past Sunday, Greg did not feel strong enough to leave the house. Email messages have often brought both of them just the right word of strength for the day.
These words written by Eugene Peterson have been shared with them twice, a double blessing. Vernie asked that they be shared here also.
"Love. Love is the primary word given to guide us into the best that we can ever hope to receive or give. It is, at the same time, the word most frequently associated with betrayal and disappointment......complicating things even further........vulnerable to cliché.............how do I recover its glory, its splendor, its energy?

Going to the dictionary is a poor way to look up the meaning of a word, any word, but especially a word that comes into our lives in the life and language, death and resurrection of Jesus. So instead of reaching for the dictionary, we look to the Story, the God Story as told in Jesus.......so I will no longer look in the dictionary or my own experience for the meaning but to the Story. As I assimilate the Story, slowly, meditatively, believingly, I begin to get it: every act of love requires personal, sacrificial giving appropriate to the person being loved; the less of me, the more of God~ and God is love."

During a recent conversation with Greg I discovered that as the writer of a vocabulary column, he has often reached for not ‘the dictionary’ but one of a collection of dictionaries as he worked. Many of his days give witness to his assimilation of the Story and his personal sacrificial giving. With all his being he lives to shout God is love and we love because God first loved us.

Posted by Georganne Wilkinson Robertson