You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the first and great commandment.  And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself- Matthew 22:37-39 NKJV

This past weekend some very close friends came in from out of town and surprised my husband and I with concert tickets. The visit was exactly what we needed.  We got some much-needed rest, shared what God is doing in our respective lives, recollected past adventures and made some fun new memories. 

The concert was great. 

The music did what good music does, it transported me back in time and reminded me of all sorts things I had more-or-less forgotten. For some reason, all the old music also made me think a lot about old me. Young Lisa was very passionate about God, life and people. Truth-be-told, young Lisa occasionally lacked wisdom about all sorts of random things, especially people.  Nonetheless, what she lacked in wisdom she made up for in passion and joy. Young Lisa truly believed people, while not always good, were always worth investing in. She believed with all her heart that loving God well means loving people well (1st Corinthians 13:4-7, Matthew 5:44). My love for God is still intact. 

However.

I have experienced enough life to have become a little cynical and even jaded when it comes to people. This is not good. I may have gained a lot of wisdom but in the process of gaining that wisdom I have also learned wisdom can bring with it more than a little pessimism and sorrow (Ecclesiastes 1:18).  I was deeply convicted that I could stand to be a lot more like Jesus in where people are concerned (1st John 1:8, John 3:16, Luke 19:40-42). The sheer number of memes posted by Christians making fun of and pointing out the worst in people tells me I am not alone in my cynicism.  As we drove home in the dark it was Revelation 2:2-4 that came to mind: 

I know your deeds, your hard work and your perseverance. I know that you cannot tolerate wicked people, that you have tested those who claim to be apostles but are not, and have found them false. You have persevered and have endured hardships for my name and have not grown weary.

Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken the love you had at first. Consider how far you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first. If you do not repent, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place.

No one knows exactly what was going on in the day-to-day life of the Ephesian church.  The text states they had lost their “first love”. Obviously, Jesus is the first love of every believer. However, I wondered if there was more to losing their first love than just a lack of excitement over Jesus and worshiping Jesus.  It occurred to me that perhaps the Ephesian church had just become a bit hardened to the people around them and that impacted their relationship with God as well. Perhaps in all their moral behavior, sound doctrine and do-gooding they had somehow forgotten that loving people well is just as critical as loving God well (Mark 12:29-31, John 13:34, Romans 13:10).  I do know (from experience) that the longer we know Jesus the easier it becomes to lose the passion we once had for Jesus and the people He died for. I also know that fading love for God and/or people is not something that can be tolerated in the life of a believer if we want to avoid the fate of the Ephesian Christians (Revelation 2:5). 

Even after an excess of navel-gazing, I still don’t have all the answers. It’s fair to say we lose our first love for God and people when our passion for life starts to fade, routine takes over and we stop going out of our way for God and people.  Once that happens, we begin to notice more of the bad than the good in the people around us. 

It’s all downhill from there, spiritually speaking.  

If I’m right on this one, then getting our passion for God and people back means we have to find a way to fall in love with life, do what we did at first and choose to see the good in people again. When we love the life we have, we cannot help but love and serve the God who gave us that life. Profound, whole-hearted gratitude for the life we have, gives us a better (and godlier) perspective on everything including the people God puts in our path (even the messy ones). 

In order renew our love for life and God we must choose to slow down and look for  the beauty of life. We need to notice and celebrate the good we see in the world.  Falling in love with means lingering over a sunset, noticing the flowers, marveling at the color of the summer sky, rejoicing in the innocence of a child. It means choosing to rejoice when humans behave well.  It means doing what were called to do for God (Really seeing beauty and noticing the good in the world always leads to worship. True worship (John 4:24) always leads to greater hope, joy, and a renewed love for God and the people He died for.