Tone of Love

Entering February can feel like walking through a red hallway smelling of chocolate and roses! While card makers, florists and chocolatiers all over the world rejoice, I have entered the red hallway more encouraged to love deeper. Our family approaches V-Day a little differently than some (more on that another day), but I recently encountered the kind of love that didn't require the hoopla!

I needed to take a shuttle to a different part of the place I was visiting. The day already felt heavy, my heart flooded with hard things. The kind of hard where the heart walls can't contain more and leaks begin to compromise the integrity of holding together at all. You know what I mean, right?  Trying to distract myself from the hard, I stepped up into the shuttle (picture a big ole van) and prepared to greet the driver. Just when I was thinking I had myself pulled together, the driver greeted me with the most sincere, kind and compassionate voice I've heard in a long time. While asking me "where to" I felt seen and taken care of. Don't we all just need that some times? A simple man doing his mundane job of looping people back and forth, wishing them good on their way, was nothing short of heaven to me. It was as if God Himself reached down and hugged me through this man's tone of love. The tone that became hospitality toward me, allowing me to feel safe for even a second. Settling back in my seat, I realized just how simple and powerful a thing the tone of love can be. I want to give that away to others. I want to live and breathe and walk in my mundane with such a tone of love that I offer a speck of heaven to someone in need.

As we walk through the red hallway of February, let’s be open to the challenge of using the tone of love when encountering others. Whether it's sincerity, kindness, compassion, gentleness -- let the tone fall on hard things. God can use this to seep into hearts falling apart to reinforce them with His strength to keep them going.

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