The Test of LoveShembull

Love Returns Us  to Eden Love is the best thing we do, and it is not a luxury or an option but a necessity if we are to be truly human. When we are living at our best, with all our energies focused, all our abilities alert and involved, doing what we were created to do, we love. No matter if we are responsible and work hard and do our jobs well and stay out of trouble and are re­spected, if we do not love, then somehow we have failed. If we live but do not love, we miss it. God’s examination of the Christians at Ephesus concluded with an urgent promise: “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To him who conquers I will grant to eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.” The promise wasn’t given casually. It wasn’t offered as a pleasant option. There was urgency, necessity, in it. He who has an ear, hear. The promise is that the Christian who recaptures that first love—the one who becomes what he was called to be by Christ—will eat of the tree of life in God’s paradise. That brings us back to Genesis and the garden with the tree of life, the garden from which Adam and Eve were expelled, and the tree of life from which no one ever ate. The tree of life bears fruit that enables us to live eternally with God. It is the food that finally satisfies our needs. By returning to the first love, we are rewarded with the first food. The return to our origin includes a return to God, who not only loves us but feeds us. When we return to loving God and the world for which he died, we return to Eden. Examine yourselves. Have you strayed from your first love of Christ and those early bursts of love for your neighbors? Are you truly loving your brothers and sisters? Remember, repent, and then do the works you did at first—love. Do this in remembrance of Christ. Heavenly Father, thank You for Your loving patience, which restores us to Your perfect plan for our lives and for the world.