Hello Friend,

I have written you a letter I will call a "Love Note". I am writing because I want to be better at Agape Love and help people learn about it. I am writing and sending a unique "Love Note" to a different person each day for thirty days. It is important for me to focus on my personal experience, not give advice, direction or suggestions. For this reason, I always write "Love Notes" to someone I have never met and know nothing about, and you were chosen at random to get this note.  We are strangers, but I hope what I write will have meaning to you.

I have been writing "Love Notes" for three weeks now, and this has been a serious time of spiritual growth for me. I have never been so focused on and preoccupied with "doing" Love. It isn't strictly because of the writing, but the writing has driven me to listen to podcasts and videos about Agape Love every day, read chapters in the Bible about practicing Love and Christ demonstrating perfect Love, and respond to people who have reached out to me for support and spiritual leadership (which hasn't happened very often in recent years). In the grand scheme of things, three weeks is a drop in the bucket. However, my journey really started over a year ago. 

I was determined that learning about and "doing" agape Love would change me and a group of people "doing" Love could change the world. In that mindset, I committed to giving 5000 hugs in one year... yes, I did say 5000. Co-workers would line up in the halls at work and get and give hugs... it was pretty wonderful, and uncomfortable. I felt that a hug was an act of "doing" Love, that I could give a hug to anyone that would allow me to and felt if I told people what I was doing, I would be accountable to it. My heart was in the right place, but I only made it to about 1000 hugs before I ended that grand salute to good intentions. I knew Love was the key to every good thing, but no matter how I tried or how many hugs I gave, it was insufficient to stimulate my growth in it. I learned a very valuable lesson; no matter how I try, I do not have the ability to grow Love within myself. And for me to be accountable to "doing" Love, my accountability had to be to Christ, not to pride. I learned that I not only had to commit to "doing" Love as my foremost mission each day, but that if I was to succeed, prayer, quiet time, feeding my spirit with reading and listening to God's instruction was an absolute, non-negotiable requirement. I am a follower of Christ, but I am still amazed that I "missed it"... the reality that my ability to "do" Love is Christ in me, not "the great I" mustering it up. Further more, my primary reason to "do" Love is first, because it is what God says I should do, and next, to attempt to be a model of this great Love, the Love of Christ. "Doing" Love is not to show my "goodness", but His (truth is, I am not a very naturally "nice" person, and I am the world's slowest learner, so this revelation is nothing short of a miracle).

Well, that's my note to you; thank you for reading. I find myself concentrating on something different every day, and I'm sure it's for a reason. May God bless and enrich your life. Your name was picked at random to get this "Love Note", but I am certain it wasn't by chance.

Sincerely,

Committed to Doing Love