"Loving Well"

God is Love.  The gospel of Jesus Christ commands us to love God and to love our fellow men.  Love is the common theme in the counsel that the Lord has given us through His scriptures.  It is worthwhile to examine love in all of its flavors.  We start out in this life loving our parents.  If we're lucky, we also love our siblings.  As we branch into the world, we love friends and extended family.  Eventually, we might marry and love a spouse.  And then we love our children, and the cycle perpetuates.  We often give and receive counsel to love the people I just mentioned, but how often do we ponder whether or not we are loving them well.

Is Love a skill that must be practiced, refined, perfected, and presented at the last day?

Malcolm Gladwell wrote a book called "Outliers".  He analyzes people in various fields who far outperform their peers.  One of the strongest common themes that he found among these outliers was time. On average, it takes 10,000 hours of dedicated, focused, mentored practice at a given activity to break out of the pack and become truly excellent at something.  Is Love any exception?

When you relate to your spouse during day-to-day things, do you pay attention to whether you are loving them with your words and your actions?  Or are you taking "love" for granted?

Is "No" sometimes more loving then "Yes"?

I would suggest that Godlike Love is a skill that we can learn.  I think it's the main thing He's trying to teach us.  I also suggest that upon practicing the skill of Love with sufficient intensity, it changes our nature, making us more like God.  After all, you go where you look.  Ponder this the next time you are challenged in one of your relationships.  Examine whether or not your Love skill is a little rusty.  Apply a diligent effort to not love your family on autopilot, but with diligence and patience.

The atonement of Jesus Christ was the greatest example of God's Love that we know.  Of all the actions available to the Son of God, he chose to redeem us from our sins.  That is the embodiment of not just love, but loving us well.