This week a friend told me that she could tell that I love the Lord by the way I conduct myself in corporate worship. Hearing an affirmation about personal piety is tricky business. I simply responded, "Well, I *do* love Him." But now that I've had a chance to think about it, I'd say that the assembly of worshippers is the easiest place in the world to express (and thus display) love for God. Where it gets a little testier is outside of those walls, out here where I'm rubbing flesh with the jackals and hyenas of this life.
Jesus commands us to love our neighbor in the same breath that we are commanded to love God. St. John goes as far as to say that "If any one says 'I love God,' and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen." (I Jn 4:20)
Yes, I love the Lord. And I don't want to temper my expression of that love when I gather to worship with the family of God simply because I fall ... over and over again. But I have this hope: that as I gaze at Him and proclaim His goodness, I am being transformed into His image ... that His holinness is gradually displacing my selfishness in the life-long process we call conversion.
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