We humans are amazing things. Our abilities to feel, to love, to do, to simply be, is unprecedented in the world. We feel emotions passionately (whether we show them or not) be it joy, pain, anger, or fear, the ability of the human body to feel and to cope with emotion is amazing if one takes the time to think about it.
For instance, our ability to love others. In loving others, we give them a power over us, we allow them to take a piece of ourselves. We give them the ability to hurt us, to jade us, to make our life miserable, simply by saying something negative, or ignoring a phone call, or the simple things one doesn’t even notice. And yet, even in anger, we continue to love them.
What is it in us that aches to be loved? What is it in us that cleaves to others, both of kindred spirit and polar opposite? Why do we allow others, time and time again, to wound us, and jade us, and give them power over us?
I believe that love is something deeper than we humans can even begin to fathom. We feel it, yes. We love other people, sometimes, be it rarely, with everything we have. There are those that we would give our lives for, or at least that we say we would, feel that we feel we would, though no one can ever truly know until circumstance puts you in that position.
However, we humans do not feel love in its truest, deepest form, no matter how truly, deeply, and passionately we may love someone. Our love, even in the truest form we can possibly give it, is still shot through with anger, and pain, and fear. (For I think that to some degree, we all fear loving another. It is a great power to give someone.) In our sinful world, we cannot possibly love someone truly, try though we may.
We throw the word “true love” around without much thought. It’s a fairytale, picturesque thing. The prince comes galloping in on his white horse and saves the day, they ride away into the sunset, maybe share a really romantic kiss, and “bam” it's true love. But it’s not true love.
True love is beyond that. It’s beyond human toil, and suffering, and our pitiful ability to “love” someone.
True Love is a gift of God. Only God can love truly, but I believe occasionally He gives us our own “true love,” to the best of our abilities to truly love someone. It happens when we open our hearts and allow God to work in our lives. It happens when God puts two people in the exact place, at the exact moment. And it doesn’t just happen when the prince comes swooping in and saves the princess. To truly love someone takes time. It takes time to grow a relationship of any kind, even one of hatred, let alone one of love. It involves getting to know someone, inside and out, almost as well as you know yourself. It means learning to trust someone, even to the point of your life, and earning their trust in return. It means you have to respect one another to the utmost.
Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 13 that “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.” (NIV Translation) This is true love, laid out in a simple, easy-to-follow format. All we have to do is live it. Ha. Not so easy. I don’t know about you, but patience is not one of my virtues. And I’m not always kind, either. Heck, I’m a sinner! It’s impossible for me, or anyone else, for that matter, to always be kind.
The thing that gets me most is that love keeps no record of wrongs. How often do we throw that in someone’s face. “Well, you did this and this,” or “You told so and so such and such a thing that you weren’t supposed to tell.” Love doesn’t work like that. How crazy is that? Whoa.
But then my favorite part of the entire chapter of 1 Corinthians 13. “Love Never Fails.” This is definitely the whopper verse of the chapter. Love NEVER fails. There is no doubt about it. It doesn’t.
So why do we feel that so often that love has failed? We break up with the boyfriend (the one you really TRULY thought you were gonna marry this time!) or your friend moves away and you feel like it’s the final call. Why does love fail?
Love fails because we don’t love truly. Only God loves truly. And God’s love for us NEVER, EVER fails. Whoa.
Can you imagine loving someone the way that God loves us? Without expectation, without condition, without those tinges of greed and malice and jealousy and pride that are simply a part of us, a part of our nature, the sinful one.
To love another the way that God loves us would basically be the greatest fairytale ever, right? And it is! We have a true-life fairytale, and it’s in the Bible. God is our true love, and we already know that, for us Christians, it ends in happily ever after.
So what’s my point in all this? I’ve basically been telling you it’s impossible for us to truly love someone. Which it is. So the best that we can do is to love God. First and foremost. More than we love anything else. I believe that only in loving God can we learn to love others, because only God can teach us to truly love one another. And then we practice it in our daily lives. We simply love, to the best of our abilities, and with all we have. It’s okay to wear your heart on your sleeve. I think we miss a lot of opportunities for great relationships because we’re too scared to love, we’re too scared to let go. We’re too afraid of that instinctual part of us that isn’t rational, we’re too afraid of our heart to allow ourselves to truly love.
So we learn. We love others in our day to day lives (even those people who are hard to love.) We do it in the simple things, the things that no one notices, like smiling at someone (believe me, it can make someone’s day) by holding the door open, by helping the crazy old cat lady down the street carry in her thousands of pounds of canned cat food. And we love our friends and our family with everything we have. We trust them with our lives, we respect every part of their being (even their opinions or oddities that we dislike or disagree with) and we learn to open our heart to love, and to allow God’s pure, perfect, untainted love to flow through us. We learn to be a vessel for God.
When we allow God to work in our hearts, to direct our lives, to show Himself in the day to day things, that is when we learn the art of True Love.
No comments:
Post a Comment