One evening in Romania, my team was
hanging out in a park outside apartment buildings waiting for the
concert stage to be put up. There were a bunch of little girls there
all under the age of 6. A couple of us started playing with them.
Trying to cross language barriers was fun. We would have piggy back
races, sing the hookey pookey, and braid each others hair. We of
course didn’t leave out the fairly universal child friend maker…
picking them up and twirling them around! (Try it…I have had a 89%
success rate)
This one little particular girl took to
me. She was probably holding my hand, sitting in my lap, or on my
back for a good hour. We were all sitting in the grass when she left
for a minute. Another girl climbed into my lap. When my little friend
came back she was so upset and furious that I was allowing someone
else to be held that she stomped away with a scowl look upon her face
and sat on some steps with her back turned to me. While I knew the
puppy face she kept throwing over her face was a form of
manipulation…I wasn’t sure if I could laugh or if I should cry.
When is it that love becomes so
distorted? When is love turned into something you demand, that you
envy, a depleting resource ,or something to feel fearfully possessive
of? When do we have to start fighting for love at the expense of
others? It starts young. Maybe its the first time we feel ignored by
our family? Maybe its when a friend betrays us? Maybe when we are
abuse by those who should protect? Whatever it is, we all
experience the imperfect love that we offer each other. The broken
love that we learn to function in. We fight tooth and nail for the
love we hope to receive from others we find worthy or feel claim to.
We then grow up learning that we must
find someone in which to love romantically. Then we will be
satisfied. Ultimate love of a significant other. But then we find the
majority or films and music dealing with the issue of love and how it
went wrong. Or we find ourselves in a relationship/marriage and still not satisfied. We get angry or depressed when we don’t receive love in
the way we think we ought. And my conclusion to all this is that we
fight for love because we were created for it but we are fighting for
a broken love. We are fighting for the wrong kind of love. We were
created to be loved. Yet that love comes from God. His love is
perfect. It is not preferential. It does not run out. It is not a
codependent or demanding love. Its not based on some sort of barter
system. It’s abundant. It unconditional.
But we define love in our lives by
things it is not. We search for the ultimate love or pride ourselves
in loving well when in all honestly what we are settling for its
pseudo-love.
“Or a man may make the mistake of
calling by the name of love that which is weak indulgence, the
mistake of calling spoiled whimpering, or the corrupting attachments,
or essential vanity, or selfish associations, or flattery’s bribery,
or momentary appearances, or temporal relationships by the name of
love.
All other love, whether humanly
speaking it withers early and is altered or lovingly preserves itself
for a round of time-such love is still transient; it merely blossoms.
This is precisely its weakness and tragedy, whether it blossoms for
an hour or for seventy years-it merely blossoms; but Christian love
is eternal.” Soren Kierkegaard
I’m not wandering aimlessly, though. God’s love is hard to wrap my mind around. The bible teaches me what love
is. I see through others tiny glimpses of what true love looks like.
God breathes His love over me everyday…I’m just trying to learn
to recognize the sweet scent. And I know we all know this verse…but
try to look at it with new eyes.
“If
I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am
only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of
prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I
have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am
nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to
the flames,but have not love, I gain nothing.
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” 1 Corinthians
13:4-8a
God
is love…
And
if we grasped this…if we could accept it and know what His love did
for us on the cross (not to mention His mercy, grace, power, and
more) we would stop so foolishly misusing the ways of this world to
obtain love. We would give it freely without expectation or agenda.
We would not expect to find our fulfillment in the eyes of another
because our heavenly fathers love is secure and without need.
