Blessed By Love

 

A couple of weeks ago, my husband and I both celebrated our birthdays. Only eleven days apart, it always seems each year that our special days come and go quickly only to wait nearly a year for another chance to celebrate. In our extended family, there were seven of eleven birthdays between the end of August and Christmas, so the rest of the year was pretty sparse. And no time for lingering on any one person’s birthday in the Fall!

But this year we have had the opportunity to extend our birthday celebrations a little bit longer. Yesterday, we enjoyed a wonderful afternoon at our son and daughter-in-law’s house in a nearby town that included a delicious custom-planned homemade dinner and dessert prepared by our foodie son in honor of both of our birthdays. And we have been invited by some good friends for a birthday dinner out at a restaurant in the upcoming week. We have been feeling very blessed by the love of those around us.

Jesus told us to love one another (John 15:12) – and then he showed us how to do that by dying for us. Love is hard to get right, because there are so many different ways to do it. There are even different languages of love – different ways to express and receive love. My husband primarily wants words of affirmation, and I mostly want acts of service. So we have to work hard to keep love alive in our marriage.

Loving one another involves putting others first and imagining what would make them feel loved. In other words, it should be intentional. Which means it also needs to be unselfish. My 4-year-old grandson has been learning at preschool about filling other people's empty buckets with things like kindness. He's learning how to intentionally love others.

Today I’m feeling blessed by the love of my son and his wife and looking forward to sharing an evening with our friends. And I am reminded of my responsibility to love others . . . and trying maybe a little harder to think about intentional ways to do just that.