The bible is clear on this one thing...God is love. Everything about him is love, everything he does is love, every response he has is love. I've been pondering this for the last few days. Pondering God as love, God as all the characteristics in 1 Corinthians 13 (discussed this in a previous post), God as a diety who is patient, kind, holds no record of wrongs, never fails and then trying to reflect these characteristics back onto myself.
I've been thinking about how God is love but whether anyone would ever say "Wendy is love" and what that means anyway. I finally decided that it meant that I too would have the characteristics of 1 Corinthians 13. A fine enough thought but I still didn't know how to go about aquiring them. I was stumped. I figured they should just come to me, and maybe I'd pray about it more. And then somehow God would transform me into a more loving person.
However, God obviously figured (in his love) that method might not work so well as during a recent prolonged layover at the airport I stumbled across a book by Dr. Gary Chapman (author of the Five Love Langauges) called "Love as a way of life". The book contains the super cheesy self-help subtitle of 'Seven keys to transforming every aspect of your life' but I couldn't put it down as the back sleeve said that by learning kindness, patience, forgiveness, courtesy, humility, generosity and honesty I could become more loving.
The long and short of it is I bought it and I've read some of the chapters and now I'm trying to live it. I'm especially trying to live it in the office since that is the place I've chosen to try and start my i-heart revolution. It's not been easy. I'm only try to practice kindness and patience at the moment but I've found myself having to slow down a lot and listen before I speak, or sometimes just pause. I'm often impatient with people who drop by without an appointment but today I had the opportunity to practice patience and kindness with one such person. My colleagues couldn't believe their ears. I hope it becomes a habit that I live everyday. A habit of kindness and patience. A habit of love.
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