Love one another.
—1 JOHN 4:11
For decades Andrea Mosconi followed the same routine six mornings a week. The Italian maestro donned a coat and tie, went to the city hall in Cremona, Italy, and entered the violin museum. There he stood before the elaborate, multilocked cases and admired some of the most valuable musical instruments on the planet. They are to music what the Declaration of Independence is to American history: relics of inestimable value.
The museum contained two violins and a viola built by the Amati family, two violins by the Guarneris, and most precious of all a violin crafted by the hands of the master himself, Antonio Stradivari.
With most of them being more than three hundred years old, they deserve attention. Left untouched, untuned, and unstroked, the instruments begin to lose their vibrancy. Hence, Mr. Mosconi. His job description consisted of one sentence: play music. Every morning but Sunday and every month but August, he brought the best out of the best.
He gingerly and reverently removed each instrument from its glass case, played it for six or seven minutes, and then returned it before moving on to the next one. By the time he finished a day’s work, the museum had heard the sweetest music, and the most valuable instruments had felt the tenderest care.1
You, me, and Mr. Mosconi have something in common. You don’t step into a museum in Italy every day. I don’t cradle a Stradivarius. We aren’t conservators for musical instruments. No, our assignments are far more important. We have a chance to bring the best out of people. What could produce more joy than that?
Some of the treasures live in your house; they share your name. You tend to think of them as the ones who forget to clean the dishes or pick up their laundry. But the truth? They are finely tuned instruments crafted by the hand of God. You seldom regard them as such. After all, they have bad breath and bad attitudes and are prone to practice bad habits. But handled with care, they can make some music.
Your museum includes a host of functional folk as well. They check out your groceries, grade your quizzes, or take your blood pressure. They wear police uniforms and drive carpools and check your computer when the office internet goes down. They compose a collage of humanity, blending in more than standing out. They’d blush at the thought of being called a Stradivarius, yet that is what they are. Uniquely shaped and destined to bring one-of-a-kind music into the world.
All they need is a Mosconi, a skilled curator committed to bringing the best out of them. All they need is someone who is willing to take on the greatest of the “one another” commands: “Love one another” (1 John 4:11).
Remember, God invites us to find happiness through the back door. Most people seek joy through the front door. Buy it, wear it, marry it, or win it. The lesser-used back door embraces God’s wisdom: happiness happens as we give it away. It’s less about getting, more about giving, less about being loved, and more about loving others.
I find at least eleven appearances of the “love one another” admonition. Three by Christ (John 13:34; 15:12, 17). Three by Paul (Rom. 13:8; 1 Thess. 3:12; 4:9). One by Peter (1 Peter 1:22) and four by the apostle John (1 John 3:11; 4:7, 11; 2 John v. 5).
The Greek word used for love (agape) in these passages denotes an unselfish affection.2 Agape love writes the check when the balance is low, forgives the mistake when the offense is high, offers patience when stress is abundant, and extends kindness when kindness is rare. “For God so loved [agapaó] the world that he gave his one and only Son” (John 3:16 NIV). Agape love gives. The agape tree is rooted in the soil of devotion. But don’t think for a moment that its fruit is sour. A sweet happiness awaits those who are willing to care for the orchard.
Do you find such love difficult to muster? Scarce? If so, you may be missing a step. Love for others begins, not by giving love but by receiving the love of Christ. “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you” (John 13:34).
The final phrase is the essential one: “as I have loved you.” Have you let God love you? Please don’t hurry past the question. Have you let God’s love seep into the innermost recesses of your life? Have you, as John wrote, “come to know [by . . . experience], and have believed . . . the love which God has for us” (1 John 4:16 AMP)?
If your answer is “Uh, I don’t know” or “Well, it’s been a while” or “I don’t think God loves a person like me,” then we just stumbled upon something.
We don’t love people because people are lovable. (Only the husband of my wife is always lovable.) People can be cranky, stubborn, selfish, and cruel. We love people for this reason: we have come to experience and believe the love that God has for us. We are beneficiaries of an unexpected, undeserved, yet undeniable gift—the love of God.
We tend to skip this step. “I’m supposed to love my neighbor? All right, by golly, I will.” We clinch our teeth and redouble our efforts as if there were within us a distillery of affection. If we poke it and prod it and turn up the heat, another bottle of love will pour forth.
It won’t! The source is not within us. It is only by receiving our Father’s agape love that we can discover an agape love for others.
Be loved. Then love. We cannot love if we aren’t first loved. Just as hurt people hurt people, loved people love people.
So let God love you!
Discover the purest source of happiness, the love of God. A love that is “too wonderful to be measured” (Eph. 3:19 CEV). A love that is not regulated by the receiver. What Moses said to Israel is what God says to us: “The LORD did not set his heart on you and choose you because you were more numerous than other nations, for you were the smallest of all nations! Rather, it was simply that the LORD loves you” (Deut. 7:7–8 NLT).
Does he love us because of our goodness? Because of our kindness? Because of our great devotion? No, he loves us because of his goodness, kindness, and great devotion.
The reason God loves you is that he has chosen to love you.
You are loved when you don’t feel lovely. You are loved by God even when you are loved by no one else. Others may abandon you, divorce you, and ignore you. God will love you. These are his words: “I’ll call nobodies and make them somebodies; I’ll call the unloved and make them beloved” (Rom. 9:25 THE MESSAGE).
Let this love happen in your life. Let this love give birth to the greatest joy: “I am beloved by heaven.”
We must start here. Settle yourself into the hammock of God’s affection. And as you do, to the degree you do, you will give that love to others.
Perhaps names of people who are anything but lovable are surfacing in your mind. Maybe you’ve spent a decade cultivating a stubborn bias against him or nursing a grudge against her or indulging a pet prejudice against them.
Prepare yourself for a new day. As God has his way with you, as he loves through you, those old animosities and barbed-wire fences are going to come down. That’s how happiness happens. God will not let you live with your old hatred and prejudices. Remember, “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new” (2 Cor. 5:17).
As God’s love flows through you, you will see people in a different way. “From this time on we do not think of anyone as the world does” (2 Cor. 5:16 NCV).
You have God living inside you. Maybe you have had trouble loving the homeless. God can love them through you. Perhaps your friends taught you to bully the weak or slander the rich. God will create a new attitude. He indwells you.
The woman at the grocery counter? She is not just an employee; she is fearfully and wonderfully made.
The husband at the breakfast table? He is not just a fellow who needs a shave; he is God’s creation, destined for a heavenly assignment.
The neighbor down the street? He’s not a person who forgets to mow his lawn. He is made in the image of God.
God will plant in your heart an appreciation for his multifaceted family. Self-centeredness wants a uniform world: everyone looking alike, acting alike. God loves a diverse creation. “We are His workmanship” (Eph. 2:10). The word workmanship comes from the Greek word poiéma, which could be translated “poetry.”3 We are the poetry of God! What Longfellow did with pen and paper, our Maker has done with us. We are an expression of his creative best.
We are his poetry. You aren’t God’s poetry. I’m not God’s poetry. Together we are God’s poetry. Independently we are nothing but small pieces on God’s page. You may be a verb, she may be a noun, and I’m probably a question mark. We’re just letters, marks from God’s hand.
What letter, then, has a right to criticize another? Dare the p accuse the q of being backward? Dare the m mock the w for being too open minded? Who are we to tell the writer how to form us or when to use us? We need each other. By ourselves we are just letters on a page, but collectively we are poetry.
Agape love finds beauty in the collage of humanity. Logical thinkers. Emotional worshipers. Dynamic leaders. Docile followers. The gregarious who greet, the studious who ponder, the generous who pay the bills. Apart from each other we have an incomplete message, but together “we are His workmanship” (Eph. 2:10).
Imagine the joy you will find as you learn to find joy in people. (Might as well. They are everywhere!) Life will become less a chore and more a stroll through God’s art gallery.
Just yesterday I found myself sharing a golf cart with a sixty-plus-year-old fellow I’d never met. We ended up on the same California course hoping to cash in on a blue sky and make a par or two. As he shared his story, I realized he has every reason to be miserable. He has battled migraines for twenty years, lost a wife through divorce, is currently between jobs, and has had to move at least once a year for the last decade.
Yet to hear him talk, you’d think he just danced Dorothy down the yellow brick road. Can’t credit his golf game. His swing was a bit wayward. But his happiness was contagious. He had me smiling from tee box to sand trap. I had to ask him, “For a fellow with so many bad breaks in life, how is it that you smile all the time?”
He looked at me with sparkling eyes. “I get to meet people! Each human is a story. How can you not love a world when it is so full of stories!”
My friend understands how happiness happens.
Let’s invite the Father to kindle an equal fascination in our hearts. Think about it. If every person is a reason for joy, we have seven billion reasons to smile.
Keep in mind, we are all works in progress. You wouldn’t pass judgment on the wine of a vineyard after eating only one grape or pass an opinion on the work of an artist after one brushstroke. You give the vineyard time to mature and the artist an opportunity to complete the painting.
Give God the same. He isn’t finished, and some of his works—well, some of us—need extra attention. Take a cue from the apostle Paul, who told some friends:
There has never been the slightest doubt in my mind that the God who started this great work in you would keep at it and bring it to a flourishing finish on the very day Christ Jesus appears. (Phil. 1:6 THE MESSAGE)
God isn’t finished yet. Let the grapes mature. Give the artist some time. Applaud the progress you see. Be the cheerleader who brings out the best, not the critic who points out the rest. You’ll enjoy the relationship, and so will they.
Embrace your role as a Mr. Mosconi. See your world as a museum of divine treasures. See yourself as their caretaker. You exist to draw the music out of them. Mosconi had a closet of tools: rosin, oils, and violin bows. You have a tool chest as well: encouraging words, a phrase of admonition, a warm greeting, genuine forgiveness. You rosin your relationships with patience and kindness and unselfishness. You do whatever it takes to bring out the best in others.
Why? Because God is bringing out the best in you. Little by little, day after day, from one degree of glory to the next, God is making a new you out of you. Don’t give in to this itty-bitty, negative-thought committee that relegates you to the side of the road. Maybe you’ve failed at love. No matter. God gives second chances. Perhaps you’ve earned a reputation as a snark. No problem. God can change that. He can change you. He hasn’t given up on you. Don’t give up on yourself.
I had granddaddy duty the other night. Rosie’s parents had an obligation, and my wife was out of town, so guess who had a date with his two-and-a-half-year-old sweetheart? Oh, the time we had. She dressed up in a wedding gown. We ate Cheerios with no milk. We danced to Disney music. And to top it off we walked to the gate in the dark.
Our house is a ten-minute walk from our front gate. For Rosie the journey is a Lewis and Clark–level adventure. As we began the trek, she held up her hand like a crosswalk guard halting a jaywalker. “Stay there, Papa Max. I go by myself.”
I paused. I lingered back just far enough to let her think she was on her own. You and I know I would never let her walk to the gate by herself. Especially at 9:00 p.m.
After a few steps she stopped and looked around. Maybe it was the sound of rustling leaves. Or the shadows falling across the path. I do not know why she stopped. But I was close enough to see her do so. And close enough to hear her say, “Papa Max!”
I was at her side in two seconds. She looked up at me and smiled. “Come with me?” We walked the rest of the way hand in hand.
We preachers tend to overcomplicate this thing of God’s love. We fixate on long words and theological thoughts when perhaps the best illustration is something like Rosie walking in the dark, crying out for help, and her Papa hurrying to oblige.
Your Father is following you, my friend. And on this journey of life and love, when the night strikes more fear than faith, when you find it impossible to love the people who are hard to love, just pause and call his name. He’s nearer than you might think. And he’s not about to let you walk this path without his help.