I have a picture of my son looking into his fiancée’s face. It’s an incredible look of enthusiastic joy and love, with eyes lit up and a marvelous smile as he reaches out to touch the arm of his beloved.

I know that their first years were challenging. Their backgrounds were so different; there was much to negotiate and understand. But they were in love — enthusiastically in love!   Enthusiastic love is ready to give to the other, to make life richer for those around them. This kind of lover seeks to make the other person feel desired, accepted, and cared for.

Consider enthusiastic love in the context of obedience to God. How do we relate to the One who loves us way beyond what we could love in return?

If you read the passage around Luke 10:27, you discover that our verse for today involves a lawyer asking what he could do to inherit eternal life.

Jesus immediately asks him what is written in the law (Ten Commandments) and the lawyer gives the words of this verse as a response. He got it!

The law is not a rope intended to strangle the joy out of life; it is the embodiment of enthusiastic love. What a formula for life our Creator gives us!