Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.

Mark 12:30

My granddaughter introduced me to I Love You to the Moon and Back;* a children’s book so popular that the title has become a common phrase in the American culture! The book portrays the love of a mama bear for her cub. I, like mothers around the world, identify with that love and the inability of words to truly capture it.

My motherly love, though, pales in comparison to God’s love for me as His child. He loved me so much that He sent His own son, Jesus, to die on the cross for my sin. Jesus’ words now tell me how I am to love Him in return. “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength” (Mark 12:30 NIV).

I am to love God with all-of-me -- my heart, soul, mind, emotions, intellect, will, and strength.

What a challenge! Most days I just think of me as “just me” rather than as a person with various components. I recently learned that Christians have discussed these parts-of-the-self extensively over the years. They tend to agree that the body is a separate entity, but debate whether the soul and spirit are separate entities or one-and-the-same. They also debate how to define the soul.

For now, I am not particularly interested in debating. I am content to focus on loving Jesus with the all-of-me of which I am aware. Each day provides opportunities to explore loving God with my mind—my ability to reason, to identify truth, to study and learn. It also allows me moments for my emotions to be expressed appropriately and with sensitivity to others. My decisions have the power to reflect love for Him. I want my body and the strength required for navigating each day to also demonstrate this love.

In continuing to discover how to love God, I long to be able to show that I love Him all-the-way-to-His-moon. Then, I smile to think of this love circling back to all those precious ones, both friends and family, He has placed in my life. Full-circle love.

Father, teach me how to love You with-all-of-me, no matter how these components are identified. Reveal to me what my love is lacking, then work in my heart to address those areas for Your glory. Amen

Linda Lesniewski          

*Amelia Hepworth, Tiger Tales Publishing