Whispers And Wildflowers By Sarah Beth MarrPrøve

Day Five: Love Lavishly Scripture: Galatians 5:22, Micah 6:8, Matthew 22:37–39 According to Galatians 5:22, “The fruit of the Spirit is love.” Love is what the Spirit works in us as we draw close to Him. Themes of love are sprinkled throughout Scripture and point us to God, who lavishes His love on us and wants us to love others and ourselves out of this divine love. One of the benefits of quiet retreats with God is that we are filled up in order to love well. Too often we try so hard to love well and serve well that we miss that Jesus wants us to love and care for ourselves. He doesn’t ask us to wear ourselves thin and forget about our own needs. Yet, He does call us to look to the interests of others (Phil. 2:4) and to love others in addition to caring and tending for our own lives and hearts. We don’t neglect one for the other because caring for ourselves is necessary for serving those we love. I think many of us, in our efforts to love well, can easily let our care for our own hearts, minds, and bodies go. And we wind up quite depleted. For women especially, we tend to want to do a major project of love or sign up for something big and missional in order to love well. And those are beautiful things if we have the capacity to take them on in our current season. But what I want us to see today is that our everyday lives present opportunities to love well. This can be true in the simplest things—sending an email with a kind tone, making a phone call to a friend, checking in with our spouse to encourage them in their day, opening the door for a stranger and saying hello with a smile, putting down the phone and listening well to the person in front of us, doing that chore that feels unseen but you know will bless your family. It’s the little things. Just as we learned on day two that we don’t have to force our own transformation—it is God with Whom we partner and He ushers in the bloom—we can rest knowing that God Himself gives us our ability to love ourselves and others. God is making over our nature as we lean on Him. He gives us the power and desire to love as we draw near to Him. Who are the people in your life right now who you can, with God’s divine assistance, love well?