Boys and Love... well, new commandment love, that is

Being friendly with boys is such a precarious endeavor, and one with which I seem to be quite clumsy. Of late I have found myself being strangely bold and conversational with all the wrong ones while erring towards aloof and inattentive with the right ones. Of course it could be that I think they are the right ones only because I have kept them at a distance... [If you are a boy reading this, please don't read too much into this, heh.]

But as I was saying, it is a precarious endeavor, and though I may not be quite as clumsy as I seem to myself, I do wonder at such relationships and what they should look like.

Which brings me to another question on my mind of late (and by "of late" I really mean off and on for several years). Jesus gave us a new command: to love one another. Further, he said that our obedience to this command is that by which others would recognize us as his disciples.

What then, I ask, does this love look like? Service, sacrifice, laying down your life for the other, considering the best interest of others before your own... I want to love as God desires me to, but I know that I do not. It makes me think of a discussion we had at dgroup last week about power and form... that power is ineffective without form. If I have the desire to love but no structure through which to channel this desire, the desire has no real impact.

The psychologist in me wonders that there isn't a more structured, practical way of learning how to better love. Granted I know it's a tricky balance between seeking to love in your own strength rather than in the only Strength that allows for true love... but still, it is a balance, no?
(And I sometimes wonder if we make it out to be "trickier" than it is...)

"Practice kindness and compassion each to his brother" Zechariah 7:9

These activities that we are to practice--kindness, compassion, love--just seem so abstract to me. I want an operationalization of them, something I can grab onto and actually practice. Not that we need to measure how much kindness and compassion we are engaging in--for the measuring seems to encourage unhealthy comparison--but something measurable is something graspable.

Thoughts?