10-27-17 - The Perfect Hanger

“On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets,” Jesus said about the commandments he considered the greatest – to love God with all our heart, soul and mind, and to love our neighbors as ourselves.

I can be quite literal, so I’m visualizing an actual hanger, on which hangs the fullness of God’s revelation, perfected in Christ. This hanger, like many in our closets, has three sides. The widest, bottom stabilizing rod is our love for God. The two angled sides, which rest on the base and join together at the top, are our love for neighbor and for ourselves – which, as we have observed this week, are interdependent.

If we can manage to fully engage our love for God, neighbor and self, and give each of these loves equal energy, I believe our lives will be more centered and fulfilling. We will find ourselves thriving in the light of God, putting more and more of our life-blood into the enterprise of love. That is what we are here for, what Jesus came to make possible for us.

How might we orient ourselves into a more conscious, daily engagement with loving God, neighbor and self? We could take the hangers in our closet as a daily reminder. When you take out clothing in the morning, remember: “Oh yeah, my biggest job today is to love God, my neighbor and myself.” And when you put your clothes away in the evening (we all hang up our clothes every night, right?) review how well you remembered. Gradually this can become second nature, and we’ll see the fruit of it in our lives.

And when it becomes second nature to more and more people, we start to see the fruits in the world around us. That world is frightening me quite a lot these days – yet I am constantly called back to John’s reminder that, “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.” The absolutely best action we can take is to love actively and consciously, and increase our capacity for love every single day.

Paul wrote to the Colossians: Therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience… And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity. 

We have a closet full of hangers, with all the holy clothing we need. And what supports these hangers? The perfect love of God, which can bear all the weight we need it to. God’s love enables us to love.