The Practice Love Jar: You're Welcome to It

Have you ever been the person who's heard and "known" something your whole life, only to suddenly see it in a completely new way...a way that somehow makes you realize that you had no idea this entire time... and as you linger in this light newly shed upon your heart, your circumstance, your understanding, you feel compelled to start jumping up and down and shouting from the mountain tops like the town crier who has stumbled upon absolute profundity?

But instead of falling down in amazement at the depths of your wisdom, everyone around you just stares and says…

“Well…duh.”

Yeah, that's been me lately as God has been teaching me about LOVE.

It sounds silly because surely everyone knows what it really means to LOVE, but I have to confess that somehow I've been missing the boat.  Gently and patiently the Lord has been showing me ways that I haven't always loved well.

It's painful to realize.  And slightly embarrassing.  Are you kidding me?  I haven't known how to LOVE people?

But it's true.  Over the past four years of asking the Lord to peel away layers of sin that I have previously referred to as "my personality," I've seen edges knocked off and chains broken that I didn't even know entangled me.  I've heard it said that if you want to build a canoe, you just start with a piece of wood and chisel away everything that's not a canoe.

Perhaps so it is with becoming more like Jesus. 

I'm already seeing a change.  In my kids.  My husband.  And other relationships too.  Or maybe the change is simply in me...causing my view of others to gain sudden clarity.  Perhaps a change in my manner of approaching relationships is actually changing they way people respond to me.

I'm trying to ask myself "What does Love require of me?" in every situation I find myself in throughout my day.  And I'm trying to pass on what I am learning to my kids.

Our family has been memorizing 1 Corinthians 13 together.  Day by day we've been studying what it all really means.  What it looks like practically.  We have it hanging up beside our dining room table and it's the most referred to resource in our whole house.  We're looking at Matthew 22:37 and trying to figure out if all our family "rules" can actually be summed up in Loving God and Loving People.   

And this sits on our kitchen counter.

 And when we mess up, as we predictably do, we try not to yell, or scold or preach.  We simply reach into this jar and we practice.

With Valentine's Day coming and all, I thought some of you might like to Practice Love at your house.  All you need is a clean old jar and this list of ways to practice love.  You might want to make your own list that meets your families needs, but you are welcome to borrow ours too.

It sounds trite I know, but it really is all about love. 

I'm just sorry it's taken me 38 years to figure that out.