With All Your Heart

Mark 12:30. Asked which commandment matters most, Jesus recites the words every Jewish child learned. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.

The word all appears four times. Not most, not a reasonable share. All. Jesus does not soften it, and neither should we. The commandment is not asking for a portion of our lives to be set aside for God, a Sunday morning and a few minutes each day. It is asking for the whole person, thinking, feeling, wanting, working.

That would be crushing if it were the entrance requirement. It is not. Jesus has already told us in this Gospel that the kingdom is received like a child. The commandment describes what the received kingdom does in a life. It turns the whole of it toward love. On a Thursday, with the week's end in sight, the question is not whether you have loved God perfectly. It is which part of you is still held back.