The Sunday Guardian

Love awakens interest in life

- By Rev. Dr. Richard Howell

Each of us is familiar with this phenomenon; the love we experience and love we give, awakens our senses. We see others and feel seen; we speak and listen to one another and feel heard; we feel other people and feelings awaken in us; full life throbs in our veins.

Jesus gives us the truest experience of love for which our hearts yearn by accepting us as we come and loving us unwavering­ly. For our salvation Jesus came into this world. During His life on earth, Jesus, our Creator and Redeemer, demonstrat­ed how love transforms life, especially for the powerless and despised. The voice, thoughts, ideas, and concerns of the powerless count for little. How great is the responsibi­lity for those of us who have been given much, whose voices can be heard! When Jesus kept company with the poor, He restored to them the love of life as He welcomed and served them. Jesus challenged religious traditions made by people which serve to exclude people from the fellowship. As Jesus demonstrat­ed, all of us have equal access to God; there are no boundaries.

Love works by awakening in us an interest in life; interest in the life of other people and in our own. Admiring love activates our motivation system and sets free new energy within us. We now trust ourselves to do things which earlier caused us to shrink back. The living power of love makes us capable of truly experienci­ng happiness, causing us to laugh, rejoice, and dance. But it also leads to inevitable pains and disappoint­ments. Being open to love involves vulnerabil­ity which makes us capable of experienci­ng suffering and pain.Only the person who has no interest in life will neither feel happiness nor pain. Love for life is passion and compassion, and therefore the exact opposite of the apathy that obstructs life. Let us love like Jesus and awaken interest in life!

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