2 John 1:4-6 “It has given me great joy to find some of your children walking in the truth, just as the Father commanded us. And now, dear lady, I am not writing you a new command but one we have had from the beginning. I ask that we love one another. And this is love: that we walk in obedience to his commands. As you have heard from the beginning, his command is that you walk in love.”

 John finds great joy because he finds “your children walking in the truth.” And he concludes that the Father’s command “is that you walk in love.” And in between he urges that “we walk in obedience to his commands.” Let’s tie these all together and take our direction.

 Love, you may already know, is the great summary of everything God commands. He wants our words and actions to benefit the people around us. Everything he does serves and benefits us.

His love is contagious. It is like a good infection. Once you catch it, love starts to take over inside. It rearranges our hearts and our minds, and God’s love starts producing love in our lives as well.

But sometimes we don’t understand what our neighbor really needs. And my neighbor may want something that isn’t good for him at all. So God gives his revealed truth as a guide. We can march right through the ten commandments, and with each one our world would tell us that love is something else if our Lord did not make his will clear.

You see, sometimes love involves pain, or self-denial, or sacrifice. Sometimes love involves calling others to pain, or self-denial, or sacrifice. In the movie Hearts in Atlantis, three childhood friends, two boys and a girl, become friends with an elderly man named Ted. He has mysterious powers. Near the movie’s end the girl has been beaten up by a neighborhood bully who dislocates her shoulder. One of her friends carries her to Ted, who recognizes the dislocation and determines to set it back in place. But while correcting the dislocation will reduce her pain in the long run, the procedure itself will be even more painful. So he talks up her courage, and gives her something to bite on while he pops the bone back in place.

Spiritually, sometimes love calls us to inflict pain to relieve it. We can’t just go on feelings. We need to be guided by God’s truth. When we keep love and truth together, together they direct our lives.