then there's love.

It's the classic, perhaps over quoted verse.
John 3:!6. You all know.

"For God so loved the world... ..."

It's Advent season now. Most likely this verse will be heard more than once in the coming weeks. And that's okay. It is good to stop. To pause. To reflect. Because then there's love! There's love. It's crazy. God LOVES!

It's not just little love. Not simple love. Not random love. But LOVING LOVE.

This may not be making sense. In my mind it doesn't either, so that's why I'm just trying to write it down, make sense of it as best as possible. It's through these times that I can't make sense of things, that I feel most frazzled. It's not that I can't think, but because of all the thoughts that are flying through my head, zooming in my mind, blurring the clarity I sometimes have, it is exactly then that I need to write. I feel the urge to let my fingers rattle on the keyboard. I can't stop them. I can't write other things. I just need to let my thoughts be my thoughts. Let them ramble on, and be words. Let them 'be' on paper, let them appear on the screen. And think for themselves.
I am learning to love these times during which I need to write. It's difficult when there are thoughts that just need to get out, and I'm not allowing it. Really, if I'd just allow myself to write my thoughts that are stopping me from doing other things.... When I don't write down what's really on my mind, I can't seem to think about what should be on my mind (like school stuff)
This probably doesn't make sense, but in my head it does. And for now, that's all I need.



ANYWAY.

Read a passage. and let it sink in. Scripture is incredible, if you didn't know, I'll tell you again - it's seriously incredible. There are passages for every situation; God can lift you up! He will lift you up. He can encourage you! He will! He can teach you! More so, He will not only teach you but also stretch you and stimulate thought, He will make you think and help you understand, He will help you discern and figure things out, He will help you learn to understand who you are through revealing himself - who He is! - to us.

Let's read it then.

Look at just verse 7.  let's love one another. Let us love. Love. Dude. Just love.
But what if I don't like the person?
Just love.
What if I don't know the person?
Just love.
what if I don't know how to love?
Just love.

Because Christ, who loves, will love through you. He loves you and through that love by which you live, through which you love you will be able to love. And no it won't always be easy. and it won't always be 'just love' because it will be super difficult. You can't just love. I can't just love. No one can just love. But love is from God.

God is love! God is love and he shows it to us.
When Christ is baptized, God say something along the lines of ...this is my beloved Son, I am very pleased with Him. God showed His love through His Son in many ways. One way was by giving His Son, Christ, for the world. Because He loves the world and all the people He so beautifully created so very much He sent His Son. Not just so that I could live, and that my sin could be forgiven. But so that I can experience His love. So that you can experience that love.

So we're addressed by BELOVED... (in other versions it may say something different, like 'dear friends', but beloved is so much more loving!) Beloved.

Be-loved beloved. GOD LOVES YOU. And because of His love, as you have seen and heard, experienced and are learning to understand, you are called to love each other, for love is from God. And since He through the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, loves us and abides in us, we can also love others because His love is made perfect!! :D

So let's love.

God Is Love

⁷ Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God.⁸ Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. ⁹ In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. ¹⁰ In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. ¹¹ Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. ¹² No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.

¹³ By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit.