The country and gospel singers, Joey and Rory, have a song that I enjoy. Joey said on one of the Gaither TV programs that she was reflecting on her life before and after she married Rory and ended up writing a song titled, "That's Important to Me." In it she sings about many things like paying our bills and staying out of debt, telling the truth and being real, and feeding my family a home cooked meal. "That's important to me," she says.
As I thought about this it occurred to me that what is important to us changes somewhat from time to time. What's terribly important at age 16 is not so important twenty years later. What's important to me when I have a young family is not the same as when they are grown and gone and I have reached senior citizenship.
And yet, are there not values, actions, relationships that are always important to me? Some that never go away, that always must be respected? And then I asked myself, is there one, or perhaps two or three core values that rise above them all and are most important to me?
Maybe that is what Jesus was getting at when someone asked him about the greatest commandment and he replied, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. ... The second is like it, you shall love your neighbor as yourself" (Matt 22:36-39). Which reminded me of Paul's words in 1 Corinthians 13, "But now faith, hope, love abide these three; but the greatest of these is love."
It becomes even clearer when we ask, 'what put Jesus on the cross?' and John answers: "God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son ..."
When Paul told the Corinthian church that he was "determined to know nothing among them except Jesus Christ and him crucified" (1 Cor 2:2) it must have been because he saw love there most of all. Yes, Paul knew all of the big theological words for it -- propitiation, redemption, ransom, and others -- but all of them fade into the background, overshadowed by love. It is the power of love that Jesus spoke of when he said, "If I am lifted up I will draw all people to myself" (John 12:32). It is the magnetic power of love that draws us to him even now as we come to the Lord's Table.
The 17th century English poet, George Herbert, said this eloquently in a poem titled "Love (III)":
Love bade me welcome: yet my soul drew back
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning,
If I lack'd any thing.
A guest, I answered, worthy to be here:
Love said, You shall be he.
I the unkind, ungrateful? Ah, my dear,
I cannot look on thee.
Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,
Who made the eyes by I?
Truth Lord, but I have marr'd them: let my shame
Go where it doth deserve.
And know you not, says Love, who bore the blame?
My dear, then I will serve.
You must sit down, says Love, and taste my meat:
So I did sit and eat.
Love invites us here, to His Table. That's important to me, as I am sure it is to you also.
