As Kingfishers Catch FireSample

Love, Love, Love

If we’re honest, most of us consider Leviticus dry reading, the kind of reading to do if you’re having trouble falling asleep or you’re doing some kind of forced penance. But not so fast. There’s something going on in those pages, something stirring.

“No single word in Leviticus has been quoted more often or in so many different contexts than this imperative verb in Leviticus 19:18: love. The word is threaded all through the rest of the Hebrew Scriptures and embedded on nearly every page of the New Testament. Love as a verb is personal, relational, comprehensive. Love is the primary verb in our Scriptures as a whole and in our language still.”

The uber-popular phrase these days is “Love wins.” But the question must be posed, “What kind of love?” And that question must be asked because there is the love we have for our trucks and cars, the love we have for musicians and their ballads, the love for sports teams, movies, pets, tacos, and the list goes on, doesn’t it? So if love does indeed win, and let’s believe it does, then again, what kind?

A Levitical-kind-of-love, that’s what kind. The kind that is straightforward without pages and pages of qualifications and loopholes. The kind that is direct and to-the-point and unconcerned with what’s uber-popular or not these days. The kind that loves a neighbor like we love ourselves, period, end of discussion, whether we feel like it or not. That’s the kind of love that not only wins, but conquers all, forever and ever, amen.

And to think we thought Leviticus was boring.

Just do it. Love your neighbor as yourself.

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