Years ago my wife and I lived on the shore of Walby Lake, a small lake near Palmer, Alaska, USA. At that time, ours was the only house along its shoreline. People from the nearby city of Anchorage would often drop their unwanted pets in isolated areas like ours. One evening as we drove up our driveway, a furry young German Shepherd dog slithered up to us pleading for food and love. Our large meal and a scratch behind the ear quickly changed a hungry, lonely dog into our dog, quivering with love and bouncing with thanksgiving. Sheba gave us daily love for nine years.

Oscar Hammerstein once wrote to Mary Moltin, star of the Broadway play South Pacific, “the bell is not a bell until you ring it. A song is not a song until you sing it. Love is not love until you give it away.” The “love” reservoirs within us are filled with various kinds of love, natural and spiritual – an unending supply of love for our spouse, family, neighbours, friends and fellow church goers. Love to fit every human need. Yet often we church goers withhold that love from others.

Deep within us is a love sanctuary, an abode of love – spiritual love awaiting distribution to others in our world and world of those around us. The place is sheathed with layer after layer of God’s love. Hanging on the wall in an elaborate picture frame are quotations from 1 Corinthians 13:4-8; 1 Peter 1:22; 1 John 2:16, 3:18. All the “gifts of the Holy Spirit” partake of this love. They would not likely exist if their foundation was not love. So, we are literally stock-piled with God’s love waiting within us to be released and spread – widespread to all those who we come in contact with. “God so love the world…that He gave…”

We are in the process of “becoming.” Becoming what? A finished piece of Divine workmanship. Christ is pattern, our building model. Upon the foundations of love, we are being built – Christ being our foundation. So we are being built into the “image and likeness of God in Christ” fundamentally through love. How fast we grow is conditioned upon our response – to what degree we allow Him to work in us.

By Gordon Kler