my brain associates words with songs. So Tina popped into my mind and is in
fact still singing. I apologize in advance if I have filled your mind with less
than stellar music.
This is about Love. What does Love
really mean? Why is it tattooed to my body? Why is the thing I resist the most
the thing I need the most? Why do I stay awake and ponder the meaning of love?
This is not another post by a girl swept up in fantasies of love
and romance. Believe me I am not that kind of girl .In fact I am quite the
opposite. I am the girl who thinks about love, because I really don’t
understand it.
I am the kind of girl who tattoos “Love” to my body because I
think Love is a simple hippie term. I am the kind of girl who years later
thinks God is funny because I have a permanent reminder of Love on my arm.
Don’t get me wrong I love my tat. It looks pretty sweet, but lately every time
I look at my arm the question “What is Love?” comes to mind.
Love is thrown around a lot. We love people. We love our pets.
We love sports teams. We love a certain band. Is Love just another way of saying
this thing makes me happy?
As a follower of Christ, Love is something more. Love isn’t just
about something or someone who makes me happy. We are called to love friends and enemies. Is
it possible to really love like this?
The Christian response is yes we can love because Christ first
loved us. But what does that really mean? I hear it all the time. Jesus is
love. Jesus death was motivated by love. Love is thrown around as much in the
church as in the world. Actually probably more, but still no one explains what
the meaning of love is. If Jesus death was motivated by Love then why would He
choose to love those who are so incapable of receiving and giving Love?
How do I not just
give love, but receive love? How does a broken generation wounded by this
worlds love share the love of Christ? How do we effectively give the love that
we don’t understand?
church messes up the most! We don’t allow the questions. We tell people just
believe. Well I believe a lot of things in my mind that my heart doesn’t
experience. We need to experience not just believe. We need to encounter. We
need our hard hearts melted. We need to walk through the pain to the hope. As a
church we need to be willing to walk through hard questions without jumping in
with the church response. We as a church need to relearn what love means. To a
broken hurting world explaining Love doesn’t do Justice. We have to embody Love.
So the questions
still remain: what does love really mean? Why is it tattooed to my body?
