Love in action and truth
Day 690, Thursday, July 2
1 John 3:11-24
Three words stand out to me in today’s reading: love, hate and truth.
Right before I wrote this reflection I read about a conflict between two groups of people who both claim the title of “Christian.” What this particular conflict was about isn’t important—we can easily find dozens more like it. But the form it took was all too familiar: each side claimed to have the truth. More importantly, each side insisted it was motivated by love and its opponents were motivated by hate. Does it sound familiar yet?
It’s a familiar argument used by people who disagree on religious or political matters, or on relations between sexes and races. Usually the first casualties are truth and love, and only hate survives.
John makes an appeal in 3:18 that is as imperative today as it was when this was written: “Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.” Claiming to be motivated by love doesn’t make it so. Love is proven not by argument but by actions and fidelity to the truth.
What if we read these words not as a way to condemn our opponents, but as a way to evaluate our own hearts? Are we committed to truth, or just to being right? We say we love our enemies. Are our actions loving?
John doesn’t tell us to fear being hated. If we take the teachings of Jesus seriously, we know that comes with the territory. He does warn us, though, about being hateful. “Do not be surprised, my brothers and sisters, if the world hates you. We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love each other. Anyone who does not love remains in death. Anyone who hates a brother or sister is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life residing in him.”
-Rev. Mark Fleming
Thursday meditation
Ecclesiastes 3:9-17
What do workers gain from their toil? I have seen the burden God has laid on the human race. He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end. I know that there is nothing better for people than to be happy and to do good while they live. That each of them may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all their toil—this is the gift of God. I know that everything God does will endure forever; nothing can be added to it and nothing taken from it. God does it so that people will fear him.
Whatever is has already been, and what will be has been before; and God will call the past to account.
And I saw something else under the sun: In the place of judgment—wickedness was there, in the place of justice—wickedness was there.
I said to myself, “God will bring into judgment both the righteous and the wicked, for there will be a time for every activity, a time to judge every deed.”
Prayer focus
Search us, O Lord, and remove anything that is not love.