Yesterday afternoon was beautiful. We spent most of it outside around the pool, and blowing bubbles (a favorite of our current house guest), capping it all off with a popsicle. While we were out there, I had Pandora set on a 70’s light rock station.

I’m always struck by 70’s lyrics. I’m sure everyone says that about their own era of music, and, truly, I love some of just about every era and genre of music out there, but there is just something about the 70’s that gets my brain working those words through my mind. There we were, playing a fishing game we made up, and the Doobie Brothers started in on Long Train Runnin’. Loud and proud the chorus rang out in the air, and in my heart…

Without love, where would you be now?

And I thought, “Seriously? Where would we be?” I think it’s a question worth considering, especially today, if not everyday.

Where would many of us be, if our ancestors hadn’t had great foresight and loved their children and future generations of their family enough to leave the only people and places they knew to chart a course to the New World and the freedom it promised? What if they hadn’t worked and scrimped and saved every nickel to build a new life here, for no other reason than to ensure a better life for grandchildren and great-grandchildren they might never even meet?

Without love, where would you be right now?

Where would we be if generations of scared moms and dads hadn’t packed their sons off for war? Without their great love for something bigger – the cause of freedom from the terror of tyrannical crazies – where would we be? What if young men, some barely shaving, hadn’t put pictures of their girls in their helmets and then watched some of those helmets be blown clean away from their buddies’ shoulders? What if they hadn’t pushed past their fear to fight, only to receive a medal, and years of instant replays of the atrocities they’d seen, as a reward? What if none of them had thought it worthwhile?

Without love, where would you be now now now now?

Where would we be if our God hadn’t thought us worth the trouble to make a way out from under our incredible sin? What if He hadn’t looked at us, His creation, and said, “I love them enough to orchestrate a plan for them to be with Me for eternity, even if that means the death of my own Son.” What if we had nothing more in this life, and beyond that, nothing more after it? What if there was no hope at all, but just a life full of the depravity of mankind?

Without love, where would you be right now? Without lo-o-o-ove?

Today is a day for remembering. Without the love of family, country, and God, well…I shudder to think where we would be. So, instead, I will be so, SO thankful for where we are. Maybe you’ll join me.

“This is how we’ve come to understand and experience love: Christ sacrificed his life for us. This is why we ought to live sacrificially for our fellow believers, and not just be out for ourselves.” 1 John 3:16 MSG

“A right time for birth and another for death,
A right time to plant and another to reap,
A right time to kill and another to heal,
A right time to destroy and another to construct,
A right time to cry and another to laugh,
A right time to lament and another to cheer,
A right time to make love and another to abstain,
A right time to embrace and another to part,
A right time to search and another to count your losses,
A right time to hold on and another to let go,
A right time to rip out and another to mend,
A right time to shut up and another to speak up,
A right time to love and another to hate,
A right time to wage war and another to make peace.” Ecclesiastes 3:8 MSG

“This is how much God loved the world: He gave his Son, his one and only Son. And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life. God didn’t go to all the trouble of sending his Son merely to point an accusing finger, telling the world how bad it was. He came to help, to put the world right again. Anyone who trusts in him is acquitted; anyone who refuses to trust him has long since been under the death sentence without knowing it. And why? Because of that person’s failure to believe in the one-of-a-kind Son of God when introduced to him.” John 3:16-17 MSG