Love

Without love, the outward work is of no value; but whatever is done out of love, be it ever so little, is wholly fruitful. For God regards the greatness of love that prompts a man, rather than the greatness of achievement.
Thomas à Kempis

There's great fear and great hope in this statement. Can it be true that without love, my work is of no value? What if it were true? And what if love really did flow out of an intimate love relationship with God from the heart? This would explain why we don't love, and fail to find love. We don't know how to love because love does not penetrate the masks we wear. And very few people are brave enough to expose their true selves long enough to experience Love. And this is why bad things have happened to our understanding of love.

Why do people strip the emotion and feeling from love? Because both our understanding and experience of love is broken, and we broke it. And the pieces that remind us of this make us very very uncomfortable and we are really good at hiding the evidence (but like the boy who stole the cookie, though we may hide the crumbs, we forget that the chocolate is smeared all over our face). Love flows from the heart, and is the product of intimacy with God, who is Love. Intimacy is impossible outside of the heart. Unfortunately for us, we are incapable of love because we've sold our hearts to the Devil, traded them in for duty and efficiency in living "Christian" lives. What am I talking about? We've been convinced for years that our hearts are desperately wicked. And who can know...it's not true...anymore? And we wonder why we love so little? (man that's a deep consideration)

So connect the dots. If the heart is broken, hurting, wicked, and neglected, and this is the only place intimacy can occur, how can we expect to love God with our whole heart? And worse, love each other? Why has my Christian faith been boiled down to a mere information transfer of lists of what I should believe and do? And why have I least been taught how to be a lover of God from the deep heart Jesus gave me and showed the way of intimacy?

There's a dangerous enemy, that's why. He knows that love is point of Christianity. He knows that it really is all about love. He knows how to keep us from believing that. And worse, He wants to steal the heart from all of us. Please guard your heart. If you've lost it, get it back. It's time that we learned how to be intimate with God with our hearts. Step one, remove your mask. (God sees through it anyhow, and He loves what He sees)