Home grown
Cultivate is a good word. It is a very earthy word and speaks to me of a daily effort put forth. You can hear the dirt in the word - this is a word that has the clean smell of sun and rain. Cultivate means to improve something by labor, care, or study. When I cultivate something, the day-to-day work is not unusually hard - or it is often as hard as I want it to be - but the discipline of doing it consistently is where the challenge is. It is something that needs care and that I care about. Cultivation has value because it is done over time - it is a building-up that gains instrumental value and utility through its strength.
Our love of God is not something that will spring into completion over night. This is a relationship that will take on new and ever changing meanings and aspects over time. When we cultivate our love of God, it becomes stronger, but not just that, it begins to invade all the spaces of our lives. As we begin to live the gospel life, we start to shine with the love for each other that Jesus had for us - what I call “Jesus-love”. The world will do its best to stop us from the daily work cultivating Jesus-love, and even if it cannot stop that work, it will try to convince us to hem this love into a specific place in our lives. Some people say that their relationship with Jesus is a private matter and is not something they share. They act like their Jesus-love must be contained, or it will offend people, marginalize people, or turn people off. But these people miss the point.
Do you really know what I mean by Jesus-love? It is that unconditional love that Jesus had for people. The love that made people who were doing really, really bad things want to stop doing those things. It is a love that makes you want become who God made you to be, and makes you see others as God sees them. It is the love that always tells the truth - even difficult truths, but not in a one-size-fits-all way. There is no formula. Jesus-love is a decision, and how you apply it to a person or a situation varies. Some people need you to show them Jesus through mercy (Mark 2). Other people need you to tell them the stark truth and to hold a mirror up to their lives (Matthew 23 and John 8:1-11). Still other times we need to take courageous action (John 2:12-25).
The common thread in all those scriptures is one of a love that defies the sensibilities of the world. It is a love that is real, that is intentional, and that we must cultivate.
- Written by Matt Brown
July 20th, 2007 at 7:37 am
Will use it to sew and grow, thanks Matt!