What God Does Is Love
May used to be one of my favorite months of the year. Spring has come and warmed the earth and air but doesn’t contain the rather more uncomfortable hot temperatures that the summer will undoubtedly bring.
On some level I still love May, but now it comes with all sorts of “end of the school year” things – concerts, performances, awards, and on and on. Mind you, these are nearly universally delightful things but there are many of them and I tire of them at a certain point.
Couple all of those extra things that pile into May with the usual run of the mill tasks, errands and activities and it ends up feeling like a treadmill that someone adjusted to 10/10 for me. Even now, I hear the siren call of the grocery store. I’d resist it, but we do still need to eat so I’ll try to squeeze that in between leaving work and picking up the first kid to be done with her school day.
In a few moments of free time, as I am making a to-do list for the day, I decide to multi-task and I open email to see what’s there. There is a newsletter this morning from one of my favorite authors and thinkers, Barbara Brown Taylor. My pen hovering over my list, I pause its writing and start read. She wrote about the constancy of having to pay attention to things that are necessary to her life like feeding the dogs, tending to the garden, paying taxes, etc. I put the pen down all the way as I decide to really read instead of skimming. I get to a paragraph that sort of stops me so completely I must read it again because it’s so true and also rather inconvenient.
"[In his book, Meditation for Mortals, Oliver Burkeman] points out that none of us will ever complete all of the items on our to-do lists. There will always be too many important things on them. The available time for doing them will always be insufficient. We will always be finite creatures in an imperfect world. This means that what we have embraced as a difficult task—getting everything done—is actually an impossible one, and the sooner we let that truth sink in, the sooner we can start focusing on what is most worth doing in the limited time we have."
Well, shoot. Yes, yes, yes, obviously we are finite creatures embracing an impossible task, but it seems a bit rude of her to point that out while I am making a to-do list for the day (even though I know I won’t make it through all of the items). Of course, I know this to be true, but I like to pretend it’s not. I like to imagine I’ll get through my list, go to all the events, cross off all of the seemingly important errands and then collapse into bed feeling somehow more worthy and accomplished than I felt this morning.
But as I slow for a moment, I know that’s not really what God wants for me (even though I might want it for me). So, what then, is most worth doing in this limited lifetime we have been gifted? A scripture I read earlier in the week floats through my head.
“Mostly what God does is love you. Keep company with [God] and learn a life of love. Observe how Christ loved us. His love was not cautious but extravagant. He didn’t love in order to get something from us but to give everything of himself to us. Love like that.” – Ephesians 5:2, the Message
Mostly what God does is love. There it is – the thing that is the most worth doing in this finite life: love like that – extravagantly. God doesn’t love us in order to get something from us because that might qualify as something on a to-do list (and I seriously doubt God has a to-do list). Jesus doesn’t look at us and see someone to have to encounter, but someone to love.
I know I’ll likely fail at giving up my to-do list entirely. There are plenty of necessary things in life and there is still no milk at home, so I’ll have to go to the store later. But it helps me to remember that mostly what God does is love us and that mostly what God wants from us is to love others and love God. That seems like what is most worth doing in the limited time we have, even in the busy month of May.
