Love Priorities

Remember the song that says something like, “I would give up my very soul for you,” as an expression of deep love. Of course you cannot get up a soul, but if you could, you’d likely become a spousal and child abuser and an axe murderer. Yep, this is another priorities piece.

First love priority should be one’s love for God. God is what enables us to love and even exist in the first place. Loving God first, make us able to be better lovers of other things and people as well. That is why it ranks first in God’s gift to Hebrews who had been enslaved and needed to learn how to live as free people who could set their own priorities. Love God first and foremost. Life will go better if that is you number one priority. In fact, the first set of commandments all deal with this concept.

The second love priority is to love yourself. You are child of God for goodness sake, appreciate it. We are all the center of our own little universes in God’s big universe, so admit it and accept and affirm it. This is not egotism, it is egoism (as I understand egoism; a strong sense of self.) If you don’t fill you own cup with self love, how can you possible love others? I know this is dangerous territory as we can so easily get caught up on only self love which is self destructive. But an honest of love self is healthy. As Jesus said, “Love others as you love yourself.” That infers love of self is of great importance and again enables us to be love people.

The third love priority is you extended self. By that I mean love of spouse and family. You are loved by God enabling you to love, you love self, as being one capable of love, and then you need objects of love that are close to you ~ family. This one gets screwed up often. We fall into the trap of thinking we need to love our spouse and our children and are parents, cousins… to the detriment or more than ourselves. That is just a formula to deplete you own cup so you can love anyone. If you make your spouse number three in you love priorities, I believe you will love them more than those who profess they love they as their number one priority. A sub point here is to love spouse over children or other family members. The old cliché if you want to do the best for your children love the mother or father. Again, loving creates the ability to love. When God asked Abraham to sacrifice his only son Isaac, it was a statement of that number one priority, but when Abraham prepared to do that sacrifice, God, in essence said, “Are you nuts! I gave you a brain do you really think I’d ask that of you?”

Finally, we need to find extensions of our love that reach out to the entire world. These next priorities and be mixed in a variety of ways, but we should never limit our love to just self, family, and extended family. Love may begin at home, but God never intended it to just stay there, it is a jumping off point. Whenever we denigrate, demean, or hate others, we are doing those things to our brothers and sisters, part of our family of God. We are never to withhold our love for them. We may disagree, dispute values, have all out arguments, but we are not to stop loving. Loving should also not be confused with liking. Love is a verb to care for the well being of others whether we like them or not. Again, Jesus explained it well in the story of the good Samaritan.  The Jews and the Samaritans hated each other in Jesus’ day, but to explain neighborliness, love of neighbor, Jesus demonstrated how it works with an example of one who would be typically loathed.

Jesus stated it simply and best when he told us “to love others as he has loved us.”

[Written while observing the staff onboard the Celebrity Constellation. Friendly, loving folk.]