Sent of Love
At bedtime a few nights ago, Rachel asked, “Daddy, what is love?” After suggesting the examples of love found in acts of kindness and forgiveness, I simply answered that love was “acting like Jesus.” After joining the boys’ bedtime conversation already underway with Mommy, I asked them the same question. Caleb answered, “Putting others ahead of ourselves.” After thinking for a while, Jacob remembered when we got him his glasses as a deed of love.
I returned to the question in my own reflective nighttime reading. In the Apostle John’s first letter, he explains, “In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 4:10 NASB). God’s love compelled Him to send His Son. In John’s gospel, it is also the Father’s love for the world that causes Him to give His Son (3:16). As the hour approached for Jesus to lay down His life, Jesus prays to the Father and says, “As you sent Me into the world, I also have sent them into the world” (John 17:18).
I am so glad Rachel asked me about love. It has reminded us that to live in the love of God is to live as a sent family among His sent people. Such sending by the Father shows us the way to walk…in His love. Hope abounds when we live each day as sent ones by the One sent by the Father, who is love (1 John 4:16).