How am I to turn this embryonic love for Jesus into a full-blown, compassion-producing love for my neighbor? When Peter answers that he does indeed love Jesus, Jesus replies: "Feed my sheep." Oswald's description of those sheep as bedraggled, dirty, awkward, butting sheep who have gone wildly astray pushed my question further to the forefront of my mind: How?
In search of an answer, I went to the famous passage about love in 1 John 4:7-21. The passage is dense and rich, and I know God has more for me than I have as yet digested, but for now my answer to the question of how is this: by becoming a student of his love and trusting him to work the results of that love within me. Matthew Henry, in his commentary on this passage, wrote this: "Strange that God should love impure dust and ashes! . . . He loved us, when we had no love for him, when we lay in our guilt. . . .Divine love to the brethren should constrain ours. This should be an invincible argument. Shall we refuse to love those whom the eternal God hath loved? We should be admirers of his love and lovers of his love, and consequently lovers of those whom he loves" (emphasis mine).
I admire the paintings of Vincent Van Gogh, but rather than simply stand back and gaze at this artwork of God's, I intend to leap in amongst the sunflowers, to spread the thick yellow pollen on my face, to jump on the bed and soar out through the starry night. I know that I cannot help but be changed by the experience.
Henry also wrote: "The sacred lovers of the brethren are the temples of God; the divine Majesty has a peculiar residence there."
Come and dwell with me.
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