One of the best toys I had growing up was a Game Boy Color. I played Super Mario and Pokemon as much as my mom would let me. In the car on the way to school, at home after homework was done, sneaking it under my desk in class when I thought I could get away with it. My siblings and I burned through long car rides on those things. We loved them.
There was also a specific feeling every kid with a Game Boy knew well. You'd be deep into a game, in the car, in a waiting room, wherever, and the little green battery light on the side of the screen would turn red. The red light of death. It meant the batteries were about to die and the whole thing could shut off at any second. If you didn't have a fresh set on hand, that was it. Game over, and depending on the game, everything you'd just worked for was gone with it. Panic every time.
Then the Game Boy SP came out with a rechargeable battery built in, and it changed everything. The battery itself didn't actually last any longer than the old one. What changed was that I had a charger. As long as I could get to an outlet, I was never actually out of power. No more red light. No more racing the clock. No more losing what I'd built because the batteries quit on me. Just endless Mario, and a level of calm I hadn't had before.
Two Kinds of Power
What strikes me looking back is how much that charger changed the actual experience of playing, not just the outcome. On battery power, I was tense. Watching the corner of the screen. Rationing my playtime. Anxious about running out before I was ready. Connected to the charger, none of that stress existed. Same game, same effort, completely different experience, because the source of the power was different.
That's basically the whole message of this week's Gospel.
A scholar of the law asks Jesus which commandment in the law is the greatest, hoping to trip him up the way the Pharisees had been trying to all along. Jesus answers without hesitation: "You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments."
Most of us are comfortable with the second one. Love your neighbor. Treat people well. It's basically the version of Christianity the wider culture already agrees with, and it's a genuinely good instinct. But notice the order Jesus gives them in, and notice that He calls the first one the greatest, not the two of them equally. Loving God isn't presented as one option alongside loving your neighbor. It's presented as the source that makes the second one sustainable at all.
Living on Battery Power
Here's where I think a lot of us, myself included, end up running on battery power without realizing it. We decide that being a good person mostly means treating others the way we'd want to be treated. Be kind. Be fair. Show up for people. That's a fine instinct, and for a while it works. You can run on your own strength and look pretty good doing it.
But willpower is a battery, not a charger. It runs on your own reserves, and reserves run out. Loving people is easy when you're rested, energized, and things are going your way. It gets a lot harder when you're exhausted, when the person in front of you is difficult, when you've given and given and nobody's given anything back. That's when the red light comes on. Loving your neighbor on your own strength alone, without loving God first, eventually burns out, no matter how good your intentions were at the start.
Jesus doesn't want us running on battery power. He wants us connected to the charger, which is the first commandment. Loving God with your whole heart, soul, and mind isn't a separate spiritual task competing for your time alongside loving your neighbor. It's the outlet you stay plugged into so that loving your neighbor doesn't drain you dry. When you're actually connected to the source, love of neighbor stops being a finite resource you have to manage carefully and starts flowing from somewhere that doesn't run out.
Where the Strength Actually Comes From
Psalm 18 names the source directly: "I love you, O LORD, my strength." Not my willpower. My strength. And Paul tells the Thessalonians something similar, that they received the gospel "not only in word, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit," and that this is why they were able to imitate Christ, "receiving the word in great affliction, with joy from the Holy Spirit." Joy, in the middle of affliction, isn't a battery-power outcome. Nobody grits their teeth into joy. That's the charger at work.
This is the whole idea behind becoming Fully Available in a single image. Developing your own strength, discipline, and capacity to love people well is good work, and it matters. But it was never meant to be the power source itself. It's the device. God is the charger. You can run hard on your own batteries for a while and even look impressive doing it, but the red light always comes eventually. The alternative isn't working less. It's staying plugged in while you work, so the love you're pouring out isn't coming from a reserve that's counting down, but from a source that doesn't.
This week, ask yourself honestly: is the love you're offering the people around you coming from your own battery, or from the charger? What would it look like to put the first commandment back in first place, not instead of loving your neighbor, but so that loving your neighbor doesn't wear you out?
