The first whole week of counting the omer is about Chesed.
What is Chesed?
Chesed is the way God loves.
Love perfected is Chesed.
We humans are incapable of loving with this same intensity in every single moment of our human weakness; but we need to make it a goal; to love as God loves, with Chesed love for one another.
GIVING AND RECEIVING
Just what would that involve?
Chesed has the element of giving and the element of receiving. It is a love of interactions with another. In Chesed love we reach above who we are and we go beyond what we have always known in order to experience another person. We allow that person to experience us in the same way.
THE HIGHEST REALITY OF LOVE
Chesed love takes love to the highest reality – to the place of loving others as God would love them.
This type of love takes us into a new type of transcendence. We know another deeply and without reserve.
So in Day One of the counting of the Omer we explore the love aspect of love. This is love in all of its intensity. We all have the capacity to love within our hearts; but in Chesed we explore how this love is actualized and expressed to others.
QUESTIONS
We look deep into our own hearts and ask ourselves:
- What is my capacity to love another?
- Do I have problems with giving?
- Could I be stingy or selfish with my love?
- Do I have difficulty in letting someone else into my life?
- Am I afraid to be vulnerable, to open up and am I more afraid of getting hurt than willing to love?
- Am I able to communicate my true feelings?
- Do I withhold expressing love to others out of fear of rejection?
- Am I expressing too much love too early in relationships?
- Do others often misunderstand my intentions?
- Do I only love those whom I relate to and those who relate to me?
- Am I able to show love to strangers?
- Do I offer to lend help to others whom I do not know?
- Am I expressing love only when it feels comfortable to me?
- Does my love include the other six aspects of chesed without which love would be distorted and unable to be truly realized?
LOVE MEANS KEEPING GOD’S COMMANDMENTS FROM THE HEART
This is a lot to consider in just one day! Yet; if we truly care about loving our neighbor as ourselves, and loving God above all as the commandments instruct; we will ask these questions and consider how our hearts have come to communicate love.
Coming to understand ourselves better with relation to how we show and express our love to others will keep us from falling into the pit of being superficial and not genuine in our walk through this life.
A FULL AND JOYFUL LOVE
Knowing the chesed love of God and doing all we can to mirror that in our days will deepen our relationships with our brothers and sisters. This aspect of real love will make the journey through this wilderness of the world so much more joyful and full.
I pray that today we all come to know God’s chesed love and that we are able to learn how to express it to one another as we go through our daily lives together here on planet earth.
Help us O Lord; to learn to love as you do.