Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.

Can we just stay here? 

I know that a new verse is coming, a new month is right around the corner. But, I want to stay here. I have so much more to learn－a lifetime’s worth. “Love” is such a cheap word in our society, in my own vocabulary. We throw it around with our food preferences, our favorite shows, and fashion trends. Yet, love in its truest, most real sense is elusive to us. We don’t fully love the people that we see every day and certainly not the God that we don’t. We fool ourselves into thinking that just because we understand the definition of the word that somehow we live it out.

As I've been challenged to love actively this month, the perfect illustration just waltzed right into my kitchen one day after school. My daughter needed help with learning the 50 states. We all remember doing this. It’s a route memorization process, and once she passes that test, she can say that she knows all 50 states. But, she doesn’t really know them. In fact, she could spend a year of her life in every state with the sole purpose of knowing them, and she still would only scratch the surface. Don’t you see that love is like this? We can say we know what love is, but the further we delve into its depths, the more we realize that it’s an abyss.

So, I’m not leaving this verse. I mean sure, I’ll go on with you to the next verse. But, this one? It’s coming along for the ride. I’m dwelling on it still, being changed and challenged by it. I want to keep diving deeper each day, confident I will never “get to the bottom” of loving others or exploring the boundless love of God.