10.7- Mom raised me in a hyper-love environment.

 10.7-

Mom raised me in a hyper-love environment. That has a lot of good built into it. I was the fourth and last in my family. A bonus baby they had not exactly planned and maybe that is why she focused on making me feel loved. She worked with me in the summer when I was out of school. She worked in the garden and I worked in the field and lunch was spent together, As the World Turns and then a nap and back to the field.

Dad was away at grocery during the day and so we spent many hours working together. Early on his direction for me was tough love and discipline. Mom was so full of love and joy for her abundant life of love with family and friends.

Later in life I adopted the kind of strong love from male role models. I admired my brother in law, Bill Luttrell, who knew how to work hard and play hard. My boss at the grocery store in college was Bill Agnew who was an athlete and tall and lanky and loved to have fun with me as we worked together. He showed me how to do things more than told me how to do things. I loved him and he loved me.

Later, I came to see my dad as a man of deep love for his family and for me personally. For all these people close to me, life was all about love.

When I started to date girls I was drawn to the girls who could see the good points in my life and help me to laugh at myself without criticism. Girls that wanted a fun loving, joyous relationship grabbed my attention. Sheila was the ultimate lover of family and friends and especially her husband. What a love atmosphere she created in our home.

I came to the conclusion that the abundant life was all about love. I started to question things. Could it be that all these people close to me were off track? Could it be that this focus on loving life and loving people was wrong? Several years ago I decided to read the life of Jesus regularly and I found out that He too believed the best life is a life of love.

The more I get to know about what matters in life I find it is about love. Love for God. Love for people. I have been observing people now for about 76 years. Visiting people in several nations and thirteen time zones away from America. You can see that same everywhere. Love transforms people.

It’s really that simple. If you learned something different in your life I hope you take the time to read deeply the life of Jesus and reflect on its meaning to you.

Loving God first and people as God directs is not wrong. Its right.

1 John 4.

7 Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. 10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. 11 Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.

13 This is how we know that we live in him and he in us: He has given us of his Spirit. 14 And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. 15 If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they in God. 16 And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.

God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. 17 This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In this world we are like Jesus. 18 There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.

19 We love because he first loved us. 20 Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. 21 And he has given us this command: Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister.