We don't know, for sure, what is meant by this. Did they cease to love each other? Was there turmoil or dissension within the community? Or might the issue have been an abandonment of that which marked the community of Jesus from the beginning? Of the earliest Christians it was repeatedly observed how they cared for (loved) the orphaned and widowed.
At the Leadership Retreat we spent considerable time talking about service. I was very energized by this discussion. Any community which bears the name of Jesus must be a community of service. Following Jesus leads us on a path in which taking notice of the forgotten and discarded becomes a daily ritual. How do we make sure that the love by which the Christian community was first known has not been abandoned by our expression of that community?
You begin a new semester today. You will be working out your schedules and setting patterns for your weeks. Where, among the things important enough or essential enough to your life, are times dedicated to showing the love of Jesus? Can you (or will you) use that two hour block of time on Thursday to assist the folks at Clemson Community Care in preparing food baskets for neighbors in need? Can you (or will you) complete the training and agree to sleep a night in the Family Promise shelter for homeless families?
There was in ancient Ephesus a goddess of love. But her status emphasized love in the erotic sense, not brotherly love. How quickly our world has tricked us into thinking that true love is the love shown in romance novels. How disturbing that our first thoughts of love are not thoughts of God's love for us or the love that God hopes we will have for those around us.
It is a new semester. Look at your schedules. Read Revelation 2:1-7. And ask yourself what a contemporary writer might say about us.
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