The Path Worn Smooth by Love

In the hills outside Assisi, there is a narrow stone path connecting the town to the small chapel of San Damiano. Francis walked that path nearly every day for years — not because anyone forced him, but because the chapel held everything he loved. Over time, his sandals wore grooves into the limestone. Seven centuries later, you can still see them — shallow depressions in the rock where devotion left its fingerprint.

No one commands a lover to visit the beloved. No one has to drag a mother to her child's bedside. The path between love and action is not a forced march; it is a groove worn smooth by desire.

This is what John means when he writes that love is walking according to God's commandments. He is not describing reluctant compliance — a teenager grudgingly taking out the trash. He is describing something closer to gravity, the natural pull of a heart that has been captured. The commandments are not barriers erected to restrict us. They are the well-worn path between us and the One we love.

When obedience feels like drudgery, the problem is never the path. It is that we have forgotten who waits at the other end. As John reminds his readers, this is not a new teaching. It is the oldest truth there is: love walks. It always has.