Love and Death

O Lord, you have taught us that without love whatever we do is worth nothing: Send your Holy Spirit and pour into our hearts your greatest gift, which is love, the true bond of peace and of all virtue, without which whoever lives is accounted dead before you. Grant this for the sake of your only Son Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

love ... without which whoever lives is accounted dead before you

The prayer isn't gospel, of course, but since God is love, if we don't have love we, that far, do not fully have God in our life. Which is like not having life in our life.

We kid ourselves about love a lot, of course, thinking we're better at it than we really are, and mistaking sexual attraction and inoffensive habits for the deeper thing.

How much of what I did today was infused with "willing the good of another"? Was all the rest "wood, hay, and stubble"?