Love Is an Excellent Thing

“We love him, because he first loved us.” — 1 John 4:19 (KJV)

If you read only one chapter of The Imitation of Christ, many people would tell you to read this one. In Book III, the disciple suddenly breaks into a kind of song about love, and it is one of the most beautiful passages in the whole book.

It starts simply:

“Love is an excellent thing, a very great blessing, indeed. It makes every difficulty easy, and bears all wrongs with equanimity.”

Equanimity means calm, steady balance. Love, Thomas says, “bears a burden without being weighted and renders sweet all that is bitter.” You know this from ordinary life. A long drive to see someone you love doesn’t feel long. A hard job done for someone you care about feels lighter. Love changes the weight of things.

Thomas means, above all, the love of God, the love that comes from God and goes back to him. He says love “is born of God and cannot rest except in God.” And he describes what it does to a person:

“Love feels no burden, thinks nothing of troubles, attempts more than it is able, and does not plead impossibility, because it believes that it may and can do all things.”

Then he piles up short, punchy lines, almost like poetry: “Love is watchful. Sleeping, it does not slumber. Wearied, it is not tired. Pressed, it is not straitened.” Love is like “a living flame, a burning torch” that keeps finding its way upward.

He describes love in a way that sounds a lot like Paul’s famous chapter, 1 Corinthians 13: “Love is swift, sincere, kind, pleasant, and delightful. Love is strong, patient and faithful.” And then the key line: “Love is never self-seeking, for in whatever a person seeks himself there he falls from love.” The moment love becomes all about me, it stops being love.

In the middle of the chapter, the disciple prays a prayer you could pray too: “My God, my love, You are all mine and I am all Yours.”

Here is the most important thing to know about this love: it doesn’t start with you. The Bible says we love God because he first loved us. Thomas’s song is not a list of things you have to work up. It is a description of what happens to a heart that has been loved by God and begins to love him back.

One thing to do this week: read 1 Corinthians 13 this week, then read it again putting Jesus’ name wherever it says “charity” or love. Then pray Thomas’s short prayer each morning: “My God, my love, you are all mine and I am all yours.”