Couples married for any length of time know that love requires compromise, understanding, and sacrifice—loving with all your heart cannot be conditional or halfhearted but must be total and complete. We stress over our finances, our careers, our security—but loving with all your soul sees beyond the metrics of our lives to realize the light of God’s grace illuminating our lives no matter what darkness we face.
We need to build bridges with empathy and respect if we’re going to bridge the chasms that divide us—loving with all your mind is to begin to see others as God sees us: as God’s beloved daughters and sons. Being a mom or dad is easier some days more than others—those “other” days demand loving with all your strength, especially when your strength has been sorely tested, challenging you to dig deep in order to forgive, to lift up, to mend.
We cannot love God with half a heart, with just a part of our consciousness, with a smidge of spirit, with whatever energy is left over at the end of the day; to truly love our neighbor as ourselves demands that we offer all that we have and all that we are for their good. We cannot “love with all” if we set limits on our compassion or try to section off the faith parts of our life from the working parts. “Loving with all” means connecting every aspect of our lives—from the products we buy to the way we vote, from our care for our children to our treatment of those responsible to us—with the justice and mercy of God’s Kingdom in our midst.
