Most times we want love to be a feeling or an emotion. The young ones specifically want it to be something romantic. But having lived with someone in a marriage for slightly over 10 years, I'm slowly beginning to realize that love can, and should also, be something that comes from my mind too. Otherwise, how do I see purpose when the kids are thrashing the living room and one another for the n-th time, when the pot is boiling over, and when I'm trying to listen to the wife over the phone while a paper aeroplane zips across my face?
Mark recorded my Lord Jesus saying this, "...you shall love the Lord your God with...all your mind..." Embedded together in His command to love with one's heart, soul, and strength, is also with one's mind. One's intellect, one's will, one's act of commitment, one's reason, one's logic, call it whatever you like but one thing's for sure, I have to tell myself to love even when I don't like candlelit dinners, walking in the rain, or having some elevator Kenny G-type muzak in the background.
Loving in a rational manner. Is that possible? If I believe it was love that compelled my Christ to stretch His arms out on the cross, then I have think that it was not just a feeling or emotion that drove Him to do it. I wouldn't know what went through Jesus' mind that Friday, but one of it was probably the thought - I must do it.
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