Reminded.
Your thoughts flooded me yesterday and it was the peace that I was needing, plus the reminders of things forgotten.
‘Love well,’ You reminded me. The objective You had given in the fall of last year, for this year. The abstractness of this needed some guidance. So You continued with the reminders.
‘Bless your husband’. Not a temporal, today, thought…but a road sign. Rather than a to-do list, like I like, just a ‘pointing’ in the right direction.
When I set some goals and life objectives two years ago, this was the first one on my list. It’s an evolving objective, as each season brings new needs and it just means I need to be ever alert to what that means to him, that season, that moment. It’s good to be alert to the ones you love.
Here, You drew my attention back to ‘Love well’. Suddenly a flush of peace and purpose was restored to my spirit. Love. Your greatest command.* It is Your essence. You are love.*
And it’s the only thing you ask of me. How easily, again, I am ‘distracted.’ I allow my vision, heart, and spirit to take in the circumstances, feel the call, recognize the opportunities and see a venue for using a gift…and stirring that all together, love has a tendency … I have a tendency … to allow love to slip to the background.
Again?!
Martha. Distracted.
Love was the objective … and then it was the background.
Love is a great foundation, but hidden as a backdrop it is clanging symbols* or, pots & pans in Martha’s case*.
Was that the difference? The Martha & Mary difference?
Rhythm.
Abiding is a place that allows me to move with Your rhythm. It puts the right things, at the right time, on my radar. Alert to the ones I love … the ones You love.
‘Loving well,’ then, has less to do with the action itself (speaking – or not, giving – or not, serving – or not) but more about responding to the signals from the Spirit*.
This is the place that love lives in the foreground. It’s a rhythm of perfectly balanced love and action.
Sometimes love needs a word. Sometimes it needs a word withheld. But I would only know it if I was submerged in Your presence. My tendency would be for something routine – an action (love) that looked the same way each time.
But love, and living, are simply not that static. Love shifts when the needs shift.
The mere fact that I live and breathe here before You today is a testament to this being Your kind of love. You have spoken a word when I desperately needed it, and withheld one when You knew that’s what would bring me back again from being distracted.
Love moves. Not so much as an action then, but as a rhythm. Constantly having an eye on You and on the circumstance/people – with the heart always being in the right place. Abiding.
Martha – serving, distracted, worried, accusatory and bossy.
Mary – abiding.
One was in her routine, one was in rhythm with You.
Choices.
‘…therefore, love is the fulfillment of the law.’*
And You reassure – “Yes, I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore with lovingkindness I have drawn you. Again, I will build you, and you shall be rebuilt“.*
* Clicking on *’s will open a new web page providing the indicated reference.
living! 
Shalom, reading this makes me smile…love–an action verb or just being? And abiding, learning from Andrew Murray’s “The Full Blessing of Pentecost,” abide, remain, rest=fullest joy, same joy as the Father! 🙂 Loved your perfect picture for “a rhythm of perfectly balanced love and action.” Are these “love birds” perfectly in tune with one another or what? 🙂 Your writings must make G-D smile, too! 🙂