Hope On The Rise

In the past couple of years I have attended two amazing Celebration of Life services for two older Godly women. One was 99 at the time of her death and the other was 84. The most recent one was Saturday February 11. The pastor said there were 54 family members present and all of them were Christ followers. From the many family tributes at both services the Storge love factor was woven into the stories.
So what is Storge Love? Like Eros Love the exact term does not appear in the Bible but the idea is there. It’s family affection like Mary, Martha and Lazarus or like Lois the grandmother and Eunice the mother for their grandson and son Timothy. Here is what it looks like in the 21st Century according to the presenters at the two services.
One adult daughter said our mom sent a scripture verse to every child, grandchild and great grandchild on their birthday every year. In recent years it was by text. How cool is that for a lady in her nineties.
Another adult daughter said presence means love and support. Then she proceeded to tell about being given a pickup truck load of ears of corn. When she called her mom, her mom responded, “I’ll be down tomorrow to help you shuck the corn and put it in the freezer. The 200 mile drive was nothing for Storge Love.
Finally, what was implied in so many of the tributes was my mom and dad frequently told us that we could never do anything to make them stop loving us.
Maybe Storge Love can be summed up in the action of Travis and Jason Kelce’s mom who sat in the stands on Super Bowl Sunday wearing a split jersey. One side said Chiefs and the other Eagles. She loved both sons but knew one would win and one would lose. As the saying goes there is nothing like a mother’s love.
This concludes our series on Love but I will be back next week with another topic. My prayer is that these spiritual seeds on Agape, Eros, Philia and Storge Love will produce a harvest of Hope in your life.
And that’s Hope on the Rise for now!