One of my "long distance spiritual mentors"is Gordon Cosby. Gordon is 92 years old and is the founder of the Church of the Savior community in Washington D.C. He has always challenged me in his writings about living in the way of Jesus as well as living in authentic spiritual community. Here is the latest from Gordon. In this wonderful article, he describes how ultimately living the spiritual life is a life lived in a love relationship with Jesus.
"All of us need to know that we are loved. And just as we need to know that we are loved, Jesus needs to know that he is loved. Just as we need to listen to Jesus’ declarations of love for us, we also need to tell Jesus that we love him and that we want to be closer and closer to him forever. Jesus’ love for us and our love for Jesus is a mutual love affair.
Everything else is changed by that relationship. Nothing can be separated from it. Every friendship, every love relationship, is transformed by a consuming friendship with Jesus. All our money, all our work is an expression of our love for Jesus and his love for us. We show our love for Jesus by listening to him and taking on his dream for our city, our nation and our world—all of creation. Jesus and Jesus’ dream go together.
We take on Jesus’ dream and commit ourselves to serving his dream for the rest of our lives. And even when we die, we die into our next assignment, whatever Jesus wants us to do for him, until the day that everything and everybody is healed. Until everything and everybody is sitting down together at the feast that God has been preparing for all of us since the beginning of time.
We can’t love Jesus without loving everybody—our neighbors and our enemies. When we let Jesus love us, and when we start to love each other with Jesus’ love, we’ll hardly even remember all the racial stuff that used to separate us. Or all the money stuff that kept us apart. We won’t remember who went to college and who went to prison and all the terrible chasms between us and all the terrible ways we’ve hurt each other—we’ll only remember that Jesus forgives us and loves us and we forgive everyone and love everyone. We’ll feel connected deeply in our hearts to all things and all people—and even to the trees and the sky and the birds and the water and the fish.
ALL things will be made new because of our love, because of Jesus’ love.
So we commit ourselves to helping Jesus carry his dream of love for everything and everybody. We’ll take on his yoke and walk beside him, helping him do whatever he wants us to do. And Jesus says, “I love you, and I’m so glad you love me and are ready to be yoked with me. I know a few other people in Washington, DC, whom I love deeply. They, like you, have heard my voice and responded. I want you to know one another in your depths. Even though it might seem like you’re different from each other, you’re really the same inside. I want you to start loving each other and then take my love to those who don’t know yet how much I love them, too.”
So the question is simply this: Will we love Jesus by loving one another?"
Have a blessed day in the love of Jesus and loving others!
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