19. Overflowing love…
May the Lord make your love increase and overflow for each other and for everyone else, just as ours does for you.
1 Thessalonians 3:12
When I visited Niagara Falls I discovered that they are regulated to allow a certain amount of water over each second. In Summer, during the tourist season, the flow is increased to create the spectacle known throughout the world. In 1848 an ice jam upriver stopped the Falls completely – I tried to imagine what that would have looked like – bare cliff with no water flowing at all. The experience of watching all that water flowing endlessly over the edge, of taking a boat trip right up close to them and feeling the power of water. The constant mist from the explosion of water on water was over-whelming. The spectacle was in the overflow.
And, so it is with love. From day to day our love-flow can be very underwhelming. We get caught up in the little, niggly things. We get frustrated, annoyed, bored, angry. We stem the flow of love, we create our own ice jams by our selfish actions or by not acting when we could to make a difference in someone’s life.
Whether it be withholding a hug, speaking a harsh word, forgetting a special day. Even arriving late for an important event. Each little thing we do or fail to do is another slab of ice building up to stop the love-flow.
Love needs to be overflowing, cascading over those closest to each of us, our “each other” and then beyond to everyone else. A love-filled, overflowing life can be seen through its words and actions. A random card, a dinner for a friend, a coffee for a workmate, a gift in the mail. It can be as small as a smile, a kind word or as big as giving away your car to someone who needs it more than you.
And the result of overflowing love for those who give it? No ice jam, a constant in-flowing of new love from the Father as we pour out the love he has already poured into us. Fresh love, always flowing.
Prayer: Lord, my prayer is that the love you place in my heart will always be flowing outward to my family, my friends, my work colleagues, strangers I encounter in the street. I know that there are ice slabs within me that threaten the flow. Help me to see what these are, the sin that blocks the love, and to bring these things before you, confess them and receive the forgiveness and healing that melt the blockages.
Amen
Action: Today, love extravagantly, love in extra-ordinary ways – overflow….
Journal your thoughts…
