Scripture of the Day
“God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” — Romans 5:5
Reflection
The word Paul uses for how God's love comes to us is worth pausing over. Not dripped. Not measured. Poured. Lavishly. Generously. The image is of something that cannot be contained -- an overflowing abundance rather than a careful allotment.
This is how God gives his love. Not the way we often receive love from others -- conditionally, in proportion to our performance, withdrawn when we disappoint. God's love is poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit. It comes as a gift, not a reward. It arrives before we have earned it and remains when we have failed to deserve it.
And here is the astonishing implication: if God's love is poured into our hearts, it is meant to overflow through our hearts and into the world. God's purpose, as one writer put it, is to remake the world through his love being generously spread through the lives of people who have received it. We are not reservoirs meant to hold the love in. We are channels meant to carry it forward.
A community of people through whom God's love is flowing -- to the poor, the forgotten, the grieving, the neighbor and the stranger alike -- is a community of hope. The world can see it. And it matters.
Question for Personal Reflection
Is God's love something you are receiving and holding, or receiving and passing on?
Action Step
Do one concrete act of love today for someone who is not expecting it -- and do it as an overflow of what God has given you.
Prayer
Lord, let your love not stop with us. Pour it through us -- into our families, our neighborhoods, and our world. Amen.
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