Luke 12:34: Such Is Each One As Is His Love

Such is each one as is his love.- Augustine[1]

What we love determines the trajectory of our lives. Even when disoriented, confused or derailed, our natural tendency is to re-orient ourselves toward that which we love. As Jesus said, For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. (Luke 12:34)

Sometimes we are not aware of the love which has primacy in our hearts. Or we are not willing to admit it, even to ourselves. Maybe it is acceptance, acclaim, influence, security, comfort, or control. What we love shows in what irritates us, and what we are willing to fight for, what calls forth our utmost exertion and what can cast us into despair. God uses these as tests, to draw our loves out into the open, not so that he would know our deep longings, but so that they would be revealed to us.

What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? - James 4:1

We find out what kind of person we really are--and what we really love. Then we can (1) run from that, (2) shove that realization to the side, (3) embrace that or (4) reject that as disappointing and ultimately, damaging. It may be a good thing--an excellent thing--but it is unable to bear the weight of our soul. Augustine says:

Wherever the soul of man turns, unless towards God, it cleaves to sorry, even though the things outside God and outside itself to which it cleaves may be things of beauty. - Augustine[2]

So today, I will begin with this determination: to love the Lord my God with all of my heart, mind, soul and strength.

[1] Quoted in David K. Naugle, Reordered Love, Reordered Lives: Learning the Deep Meaning of Happiness (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2008), xi., cited in Tim Keller, Prayer, p. 193
[2] Augustine, Confessions 4.10.15, cited in Tim Keller, Prayer, p. 194