death of both

Wednesday August 1^st, Ephesians 3:  14-19 My response is to get down on my knees before the Father, this magnificent Father who parcels out all heaven and earth. I ask him to strengthen you by his Spirit—not a brute strength but a glorious inner strength—that Christ will live in you as you open the door and invite him in.  Jesus summed up all the law and prophets as follows; love God, love others.  In loving God, we are strengthened from within by the Holy Spirit, in loving others that strength is nurtured and encouraged to grow.  To love God only as our personal Lord and Savior is to choose to be an empty vessel, the kind Jesus pointed to and noted the shiny outside and the mold on the inside.  To work for the betterment of others in the world, though noble, leads more often to agendas and egos and blind activism which without the God connection can easily be seduced into pressure tactics and manipulation. Of this the world already has too much.   When we follow Jesus’ command to love God and love others, in word and deed, we find that the doing informs the reflection which informs the doing, round and round, ever closer to God’s calling.  To do one without the other often results in the death of both.