Little Thoughts on Love

Yesterday afternoon found me boiling up potato chunks and trying my hand at making potato salad for the first time ever. If my mother knew it, her jaw would probably have dropped right open, because when I was little I couldn't stand potato salad. Believe me, we were expected to eat what was put before us when we were growing up, but Mom and Dad did mercifully tend to allow each of us an exception to that rule. I didn't like peas but I ate them anyway, but potato salad absolutely made me gag. I still remember throwing it up as a four year old and getting it on my Care Bears shirt! (You're welcome for that!) And now here I was, not only attempting to make it, but also planning to eat some of it. John likes it a lot. And that's what love can do to a person.

Before we had a baby, John declared that he was not looking forward to changing diapers. I was impressed that he even expected to help with that job! But I, too, certainly didn't offer to do diaper checks during my nursery duties. Now that we have Gemma, diapers are no burden. John doesn't mind changing her cloth diapers, and we even almost get to the point of fighting over who gets to do it sometimes! That's what love can do to a person!

I know of a King whose people all hated Him and for thousands of years were not loyal subjects. Yet the King finally went and lived with the poorest of them, and taught and loved and healed them. And when their crimes warranted capital punishment, He offered to be killed for their sakes and to let them go free. He endured unspeakable agony in that death. But it was necessary for them to live with Him--risen again--in paradise someday, so it was completely worth it to that King.

And that's what love can do.

"Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. 

For this reason also, God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father."
Philippians 2:5-11