LOVEABLENESS: Kindness

How can we fill our insatiable appetite for love? It won't work to demand it. But we can make ourselves easier to love. One of those ways is to ourselves be kind. It works. Here's how:
There aren't many better ways to transform someone’s anemic view of life than kindness. Any act of selflessness, or of good will, of helpfulness, of benevolence, of friendship, of favor, springs out of your own love. Kindness always fits whether it is calculated or spontaneous. And it carries a language of its own. Through kindness you help the other person know you notice her and care about her. Rarely is kindness misinterpreted. You make her feel worthy. It can be simple things like offering a ride, or affirming her when she's done something well, or giving a hug when she feels alone, or stopping to talk encouragingly when testy people crossed her path all day, or greet her at work with a smile. Maybe her spouse or room mate left the house in a foul mood. All these change the way she looks at life. You can do that for anyone at anytime.
How does that get love coming in your direction? This person will begin to send kind, loving gestures your way. It's like an investment. Can you do this? Before you get far into the day, perhaps when you're showering, say a prayer that you will see opportunbies to be kind. Tell me what happens.

LOVEABLENESS

We can't make people love us. They have their own preferences and maybe even biases. We might conclude that it's fate's way that we are not loved. "God just made me not to be loved," we may say to ourselves. "It's going to be a lonely, miserable life but I'm just going to have to put up with it. I'm not pretty or handsome enough. I don't drive a low-slung, cool, black sportscar. I'm not athletic." But hold on. Being popular and cool is not the only way to have friends and be loved. Actually, how we present ourselves makes a huge difference in whether or not we will be loved. Are we loveable? I've known many people (and I'm seventy-five years old)who did not have looks, or money or never made it to the school athletic teams, but have many friends. How? We'll begin to unpack that question next week. In the meantime, talk to yourself about how you could be loveable.

LOVE THAT DOES NOT FEEL GOOD

I'm the same as everyone else - I like love that encourages, that tells me I'm a good guy, that makes me feel good about myself, that comforts me. But a steady dose of pitying kind of love keeps us locked into misconceptions about ourselves. We just have to adjust our thinking to realize that if we want to grow as people, as Christians, corrective love is necesary. For example, the discipline of children when they do wrong things, molds their character so they become people of integrity. We do them a favour when we correct them. Because we live with imperfections ourselves, we too need correcting from time to time. Proverbs 9:8 says, "rebuke a wise man and he will love you." Our challenge is to discern loving correction from intentional hurt. Then, maybe, someday we'll get to the point where we actually thank those who love us in a way that does not feel good.

Love Hunger

It's about twenty years ago I came across this expression, "love hunger." At once it clicked in my brain that "love hunger" grabs the need in all of us very well. That need, I believe, is
more persistent and less easy to satisfy, than the pinch in our stomach that tells us it's once more time to stop and refuel. That's true for thirst as well. Seldom do we stop to say. "Ah, I know what that feeling is about." But we know we have the "love hunger" condition when we
begin to talk to ourselves with thoughts like, "Why hasn't so and so called me for two days, now?" Or we might think, "I wish the Jenkins would ask us to have dinner with them this weekend." Other ways to identify our craving for a sweet bit of love, is boredom or a case of loneliness. Unfortunately, we sometimes get real clingy and possessive when this "love hunger" attack strikes us. That would only drive people away. Let's talk about this some more next week.

I'm the Agape author. I'm in love with compassion.

Hi to all who've come across my new blog.
My particular subject of interest is love; that's love as in compassion, kindness, and care.
If we've had the right kind of love in our growing up years, we will be quite confident adults.
If , on the other hand, we've been love deprived, it will show up in how we project ourselves
to others, whether or not we trust others, how we generally relate to everyone and everything.
In short, love is really important in forming who we are. I plan to provide help to all of us,
because there is not one who does not need love. Are you interested? Stay tuned. Click onto my blog once a week. Paul (that incredible writer of much of the New Testament) says, love is the greatest.
Talk to you soon.