Now for something completely different. ...

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 That was a tag line, I think, for a comedy show back in the day. But I was thinking about my last post and recent experiences and needed to change gears. Some of my posts are polemical and can come off judgmental or dogmatic; I suppose there is a place for it, but as the end of I Corinthians 12 says to introduce the 13th chapter, "Yet I tell you of a more excellent way."

Someone on FB posted a Frederick Buechner quote, something like: Faith is walking in the direction of love. And I realized I didn't write enough about love, and God's love, here. 

Unconditional love means someone will keep loving you whatever you do. I would add, and this is an unwieldy term, noninstrumental love. Love that loves the other because of one's choice to do so, not because of any reward or benefit or usage to oneself.  If someone says "I love you because of what you do for me," that would be instrumental love. 

It may not to be possible for most of us to love that way; I'll leave that to someone else to consider. But I hope we can, that is, just love because we love. 

I pray that my Muslim friends (and others) could understand God's deep, wide, broad, eternal love for us that is unconditional and without instrumental benefits to Himself. And that would be the start of faith, rather than the reverse. 

I recently got a dog. He is not my fur baby and sometimes I have to get physical with him to get his attention. I am not even sure I love this dog; we're getting along ok. But this dog brings me nothing but itself, and I get joy from it. Not to make the analogy too cliched, but God love us and gets joy from us, but not much else, really, that I can see.  We are kind of a mess, even on our best days. I can get joy from this silly shelter dog (who right now is in a wrestling match with one of my old shoes), how much more joy can the God of the universe get from us?


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