Can love be measured as the sum of its important actions?

It's interesting to me to look at Peter as someone having a tendency to misstep with his words and actions. Yet, he is the one that is always testing the limits of a God encounter. It's rare if the other disciples did this, if at all. The Transfiguration is a prime example.

I think in many ways I have treated our years conversing together the same way: I seek to build something out of my experiences with You, to try to capture some kind of deeper meaning for something I have heard many times - now just with a new perspective. The encounter is different, the response seems to be the same. I seem to want to do something with the encounter, the reflection, the conversation. I am no different than Peter in wanting to build a reminder to mark what I saw.

Yet, there is never a command to do that, never a word from You about interpreting what was seen, just the single word to "Listen". I guess I think if I don't do something with the encounter I'll simply forget it happened, forget what I heard, have it mix in with all my experiences with You. I don't want that, but fear if I don't do something, that's what will happen.

Your fear is held on your life experiences of forgetting: you think you forget, because someone reminds you of something seen, something spoken from the past that they remember, but you do not. Something you held as important, yet forgot. It's a judgment you place on yourself as being an irresponsible steward with what you have been given. And, as with most judgments, this one is in error too.

Our walk together is not one where I command you to do something with what I have given to you. Giving does not come with requirement. It is simply a gift of love. Your true response to much I have given you has brought joy to My heart: you treasure them. You hide them in your heart, in your box, kept as your own. If you share any with others you put them back, as yours to be saved. Maybe you'll search through your treasures and see something you have forgotten, pull it out again, perhaps see something not seen before. That's what they are for: these encounters are for you, to keep as your own. You'll be reminded of them again by a passing thought, something you see that triggers a search, even a movie that makes a connection. There is no way you will be able to recall all your experiences with Me.

Creation is just that - something new, perhaps unrelated to anything experienced, no reference, always the need to build. But now you see only the need to hold, to keep, a treasure for you alone. Recall the experience of the rooms, where I keep all the moments of your life. Where I visit, where I too remember. Your journey is like that, will be like that. Memories revisited. Beginnings held as new again. These are the bonds of love, held by both of us. We will not forget, for we will always have both of us the revisit them; not separately, together. Don't judge the forgetting. Turn to the next thing to see, to experience.. and to hear.

Yes, and I hear your thought on this too. That even in the hearing you want to shape the experience to what you would view as meaningful, deeper, perhaps more revelatory so you could remember it more readily. Can love be measured as the sum of its important actions? Is an encounter, a mountaintop experience, to be more important than just being together? Are both not miracles, and one not greater than the other? Why the necessity to measure love the way all other things are measured? I think you know the answer. We seek to be together, in all circumstances, in all experiences.

Enjoy each moment, each word. Our life together will unfold as it should.

WISDOM THREAD

Someone mentions something from years ago. Perhaps from a trip, a kitchen conversation, a sentence they heard important to them.

They seem to remember all of it. We try to remember any of it.

Are we careless with our memories? Poor keepers of what’s important of our own life?

No.

Someone else is keeping it.

/1

And so we build things to remember things.

There are journals. And photographs. Book margins are filled with notes. Folders in computers are named, then later named again. Phones are filled with images.

We do it mostly because we’re afraid that what we don’t somehow mark to remember will disappear into everything else that’s not remembered.

/2

After the Transfiguration Peter had this great longing to remember.

Light was pouring off his friend. Two giants of biblical history, Moses and Elijah, were standing in it with Him.

Peter’s first instinct was to make three tents. Something to remind, something to keep.

He might have been wrong about the tents. He was not wrong about the longing.

/3

The Voice from the cloud did not say

to build something,

or to write down what was seen,

or to work out what the encounter might mean.

Just one word was spoken:

"Listen".

/4

A gift can seem to arrive as an obligation. It requires you to do something with it. Perhaps even a payback, almost like a debt. But debts can be intentionally forgotten.

A true gift can only be held. Or set down. It can even be found again.

These gifts we put in a box, whether real or imagined. It’s not an archive, but only a place to keep what is yours.

And one day there’s a passing thought. Or a film. Or a stranger’s comment. It reminds you to reach into your box and pull something out.

And the gift is new again. Perhaps you see something you missed the first time. That isn’t a loss because it was overlooked.

That’s the treasure doing what treasure does.

/5

Here is what we forget about forgetting: you’re not the only one who remembers.

Every moment of your life is kept in a room.

And Someone visits that room too.

So a memory that is held by two is not lost when one of them happens to look away.

Always turn to the next thing. See it, and hear it. Keep what you keep.

The rest is being kept for you.

/6

Our lives are kept in more than one place – with us, with Him. All of it is safer in His hands than ours.

We are not the only collectors of our memories. Some are held by others, and all of them by the One who forgets nothing.

Is a mountaintop experience with Him worth more than the everyday walk with Him?

Both are miracles.

Neither is greater than the other.

This proves that love is never meant to be measured.

It’s only to be lived in.

/7