Charity or gift love

I just finished reading The Four Loves by C.S. Lewis

I didn’t understand all of it but I did like this, taken from the chapter on charity (or gift love)

“Again natural Gift-love is always directed to objects which the lover finds in some way intrinsically lovable-objects to which Affection or Eros or a shared point of view attracts him, or, failing that, to the grateful and deserving, or perhaps to those whose helplessness is of winning and appealing kind. But Devine Gift-love in the man enables him to love what is not naturally lovable; lepers, criminals, enemies, morons, the sulky, the superior, and the sneering. Finally, by a high paradox, God enables men to have a Gift-love towards Himself. There is of course a sense in which no one can give to God anything which is not already His; and if it is already His, what have you given? But since it is only too obvious that we can withhold ourselves, our wills and our hearts, from God, we can In that sense, also give them. What is His by right and would not exist for a moment if it ceased to be His (as the song is the singers), He has nevertheless made ours in such a way that we can freely offer it back to Him. ‘Our wills are ours to make them thine.’ And as all Christians know there is another way of giving to God; every stranger whom we feed or cloth in Christ. And this apparently is Gift-love to God whether we know it or not. Love Himself can work in those who know nothing of Him. The ‘sheep’ in the parable had no idea either of God hidden in the prisoner whom they visited or of the God hidden in themselves when they made the visit.”

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Author: Peterloeffelbein

I am a man. I am an older man. I am a husband and a dad and a grandpa. I am a disciple of Jesus. Because I am a disciple of Jesus much of what I write is about him, and I usually end what I write with a question, do you the reader know that Jesus loves you? He does. He loves us all but he loves you specifically. He loves me specifically. What will you do with that information today?

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