I've been thinking about...

...Love.

And as I’ve mentioned in this space before, when I’m thinking of something as theological, as significant, as impenetrable as something like this, there is always one place that I turn first — to Frederick Buechner.

Buechner is a pastor, prophet, and prolific author. My favorite book of his is the tiny little handbook called “Wishful Thinking” which is itself an abridged theologians dictionary. In it Buechner describes love like this:

The first stage is to believe that there is only one kind of love. The middle stage is to believe that there are many kinds of love and that the Greeks had a different word for each of them. The last stage is to believe that there is only one kind of love… Of all powers, love is the most powerful and the most powerless. It is the most powerful because it alone can conquer that final and most impregnable stronghold which is the human heart. It is the most powerless because it can do nothing except by consent… In the Christian sense, love is not primarily an emotion, but an act of the will. When Jesus tells us to love our neighbors, he is not telling us to love them in the sense of responding to them with a cozy emotional feeling...When Jesus talked to the Pharisees, he didn’t say, “There, there. Everything’s going to be all right.” He said, “You brood of vipers! How can you speak good when you are evil!” (Matthew 12:34). And he said that to them because he loved them. This does not mean that liking my not be a part of loving, only that it doesn’t have to be. Sometimes liking follows on the heels of loving. It is hard to work for people’s well being very long without coming in the end to rather like them too.
Yours in the journey, Rev. Brian