I will tell you how to love greatly even though we are weak and little.
The ultimate act of love is to die for someone else in their place.However we cannot be dying for each other so we are to die to self and there are many more acts of love that involve dying, that is dying to self and all acts of love involve some form of sacrifice as dying to self. Loving in its very nature is sacrificial.
Your children came in the normal way!
You suffered pain and agony for hours and risk your own life to bring them into the world this is a high sacrifice of love, then you spent months on end of little sleep and putting a tiny human being before yourself so that they might thrive. You suffered sleep deprivation, worry for them (which never stops for ones children) and made decisions for them and all of this is an act of love and is sacrifice. You love your husband though you don’t always agree and you don’t always like what he says or does, this too is sacrifical acts of love.
One of the greatest acts of sacrifical love is to forgive. In life we are always forgiving because we are always sinned against and are sinning against others. This is love because unless we forgive we do not truly love.
To love we do not have to feel love, love is a decision of the will not of the heart.
You have decided to love and you love daily and not only this but you love God and anyone who lives in love lives in God.
I think people don’t look at the littleness of life where love is lived out everyday. These hundreds of acts of love a day build a great mountain of love if only we would offer them to Jesus and do them all for love of Him firstly. People are not thinking of all these little acts of sacrifical love because they just do them and they do them because they love.
If you look at your daily life as a prayer from the minute you get up, to making breakfast for everyone, to putting the washing machine on, to going to work, to talking to friend about a problem they have, to dressing a little baby and all this little acts of love that are showing the kindness of Jesus to others, then you will see what a beautiful prayer of love your life is. All these little things are wasted if we do not offer them to Jesus, all the kinds words, all the smiles, all the encouraging words, all the forgiving handshakes, all the hugs, all the knowing glances, all the menial tasks, all the hard work of the hands, all the love and all the suffering and it could all be such a lifelong unceasing prayer before Jesus.
I also believe that you need not go around looking to make sacrifices and seeking out suffering because you will have your share of suffering and I think that watching another loved one suffer is actually harder than suffering yourself and this is why you feel awkward about it because you know to suffer it yourself would be awful so you find it so terrible that you are repulsed by this suffering though you cannot do a great deal for the other who is suffering but to be with them, love them and pray for them.
Look at your daily life as a sacrifice of love and live it as a prayer before Jesus offering all these little acts of love to Him for His glory. I am sure your Living Prayer is a beautiful symphony of love that Jesus is well pleased with so offer it all to Him daily for your soul, the souls of others and for the glory of God. Jesus can do great things with our little offerings and what do we have to offer Him? We have nothing that we have not freely received then we should also freely return all things back to Him.
By dying to self and picking up our daily cross we love sacrifically in all we do and say and this is prayer in its most manifest form of living the Gospel.
Treasure the littleness of life, here in the day to day is love being lived in little things and many little things make a great deal of love and is great love.
Next time you are at table with your family, sit back and watch them, watch them eat and squabble, watch them talk and laugh and smile, watch them play with their food and whatever else goes on at table and you will notice the love and see the beautiful prayer of life. Look at what you have, it is beautiful and it is all prayer and it is all a prayer of love. And there in the midst of it is Jesus longing to receive all of it.
The love and kindness of Jesus to you and your family.
In my Living Prayer of life.
