Blameless Love

If you have enough time, read 1 John 4:7-21.

This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. 1 John 4:10

I didn’t tell anyone at the time, but for Lent this year I gave up “blaming others” – both blaming others in front of someone else as well as even in my own thoughts (this latter part obviously being the more difficult of the two).

I don’t know how well I did overall, but when I was able to catch myself it really made an impact on me. On the one hand, this was no easy task as I have always enjoyed and been good at coming up with excuses for things gone wrong – and quite often the fault would lie with someone else. And yet, as much as others may have been involved in the problems around me, without letting myself blame them, I became that much more aware of my own role – and the blame that I rightly deserve. (Sometimes so much that I thought: boy, what a stupid thing this was to give up for Lent!)

Love can be this way.

When I have trouble loving someone, how easy it is to place the blame on them?

The argument is that they are just not “lovable” (or at least not to me).

Rather than recognizing my own problem with being “able to love”.

Our Lord Jesus could come up with endless reasons why we don’t deserve His love. (And He would be right!) And yet He has shown us that love is never “deserved” – rather it is merely “given”.

I don’t love them because they hurt me…
I don’t love them because they bug me…
I don’t love them because they are so different from me…
I don’t love them because they….

Or maybe it is because of me.

And if it is because of me (it is), then I need the change, rather than them.

Prayer: O Lord Jesus, thank you for not using me as an excuse to keep your love from me. May your undeserved love have its way in my relationships with others as well. In your name, Jesus. Amen.