Written by Pastor Jack Wellman“Love leaves legacy. How you treated other people, not your wealth or accomplishments, is the most enduring impact you can leave on earth.”
– Rick Warren
Commentary – 5 Simple Truths About Love
Money fades. It truly does. How many academic buildings are named after people you’ve never heard about? How many scholarships are named after faceless benefactors? If you want to truly leave an impact, you don’t have to be rich. You only need to know how to love. Pastor Rick Warren shared this eternal truth about love: how you treat others leave a permanent impact, money does not. Money is no replacement for a kind word to a troubled and weary soul. Financial assistance dries up and goes away but deep profound kindness reaches deep into one’s soul and produces lasting change.
Love transforms
When you show love to someone, something deep inside them responds. All people have this ability. Why? God put the ability there. God is love. This means he is not self-seeking. Instead, he seeks others. We have this innate capacity. When someone seeks us and reaches out to us, a part of ourselves can’t help but respond. This is the spark of the divine that, when reached out to enough times, produces deep changes in words, emotions, and actions.
Love humbles
When you show sacrificing love to others, they are inspired to put themselves aside and give of themselves. In other words, they are reminded, in a very visible and real way, that life is not all about them. When love enters the heart, one is inspired to be more charitable.
Love doesn’t ask for any favors in return
Real love is given freely. Real love doesn’t ask for any favors back. That’s the difference between grace and a contractual or quid pro quo arrangement. When you give love without asking for anything in return, you trigger in people the need to show love without asking for anything in return. This can unleash several ways of selfless giving, compassion, and loving throughout the community. This kind of love is infectious.
Love is kind
Love doesn’t pull any rank. Love doesn’t walk into a room and demands status and respect. Instead, love serves. When you display this kind of love, you unlock this kind of love in everyone else’s hearts. Everyone is capable of this kind of love. Oftentimes, it only takes a change in what we are dwelling on for our hearts to be fundamentally changed and for this eternal quality to be unlocked and shine forth. If you are looking for more love in the world, start with showing loving kindness.
We are all capable of love
The great thing about love is that we all are capable of it. It only takes a word or an observed action for all this love to pour forth. Be that spark in your family circle. Be that trigger in your community. Be that change in your world. You have it in you. How can you not? God himself put his image in you. Love is the essence of God’s character. We all have the capacity for deep, pure, abiding and transformative love. We only need to choose to unlock this aspect of ourselves today.
