Fyodor Dostoyevsky wrote in The Brothers Karamazov:
Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared with love in dreams. Love in dreams is greedy for immediate action, rapidly performed and in the sight of all. Men will even give their lives if only the ordeal does not last long but is soon over, with all looking on and applauding as though on the stage. But active love is labor and fortitude…
Since I wrote about Jesus’ command about loving one another, every day a thought from someone pops up in my inbox or reading about love.
Have you ever read The Brothers Karamazov? It is great fiction. The story of the Grand Inquisitor meeting Jesus, who had returned to medieval Spain is worth the price of the book.
Yes, we have the love that the Romantic poets sang about. The love of Valentines’s Day Hallmark cards.
But there is the love in action for those we see every day and perhaps grow to take for granted.
The love for those who look, and speak, and think differently from us.
The love for those suffering from mental illnesses who are difficult to relate to.
The love for the random stranger whose life intersects with ours briefly.
It is labor and fortitude.
Faith Venture 
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