Currently Reading The Four Loves By C.S. Lewis see related

Love that Matters

I offer this question: What is love?

That is the question I have been asking myself for several weeks now. What is love? What does it look like? What does it feel like? Does it feel different to love someone rather than being loved?

And here is the best answer I have found: Love is action!

Now I know there is more to love than actual deeds, but it seems to me the only love that really matters is the kind that is lived out in all kinds of different ways and forms.

Sort of like faith--faith without works is dead right? Maybe love without works is dead too. We have all seen people that do terrible things to the ones they profess to love. They abuse physically, emotionally, verbally, sometimes even sexually. They manipulate and lie and decieve. They cause the most terrible kinds of pain imaginable. And I believe that many of them do actually love the ones they are hurting.

But, you may say, they can't really love the ones they are hurting. If they loved them then they wouldn't do those things. My point exactly. They may have true and genuine feelings of love for those they are hurting, but though they may love their victims they are not loving them. "Loving" of course being a verb in that statement.

So there is a kind of love that allows all kinds of terrible things, and a kind of love that would do anything to prevent those same things. The true character and depth of someone's love will always be shown by their actions. Even with Jesus--whenever the Bible speaks of him and compassion it speaks of him being "moved" with it. Moved to action. Jesus is always doing something--even dying.

How deep and sincere is our love. Do our good intentions only get so far as our feelings? Or are we moved to action on a regular basis for those we love? "No greater love has a man than this, that he gives up his life..." Now maybe that is not your actual life, but aren't we all called to die to ourselves everyday?

And what about where Jesus says that if we love him we will keep his commandments? Jesus isn't talking about the first kind of love that is all high feelings and good intentions--he is talking about a sacrifice, action. And he says that it is by this kind of love for each other that we will be known and set apart.

Don't you see how true that is? I don't know what things were like back in Jesus day when it came to this kind of love, but our whole culture is plagued by this idea that love is nothing more than strong feelings. Marriages fall apart, couples cheat on each other, parents abuse their children, and children treat their parents like dirt. All you hear about everywhere are all the ways that people aren't actually loving each other. But to hear people talk about the way that they feel about all those people... How does that happen?

Because real love, the only kind of love that means anything, is a choice. A choice to do what you don't (but sometimes do) want to do, a choice to give preference to someone else, a choice to be uncomfortable and risk looking foolish, a choice to risk rejection, a choice to act.

But I think that we all know this. So why don't we do it? Maybe it's because we are lazy, or selfish, or preoccupied and distracted. I think all those things are true (especially the selfish one--it's hard to die to yourself), but I think what is probably the most true in all the different kinds of circumstances is this: we are afraid.

We are afraid that if we try to love we will fail; afraid that if we give our hearts they will be rejected and refused; afraid of what it might cost us once we start; afraid that we will get in over our heads; afraid that we will look ridiculous. But God tells us to fear nothing and no one but him, so when we give in to those fears we are sinning against God, the one who has loved more and risked more and been rejected more and looked foolish more than all the rest of humanity put together.

I said a long time ago that I wanted to love extravagantly with no thought for what I would look like or how people would respond or how much it would cost me. I said that because something inside of me realized how vitally important it was to love people this way--God's way. It is very hard for me to love even just a few people like this, but I know that I have to start somewhere. I am constantly coming up against more and more fears that I didn't even know I had that rise up and threaten to overwhelm the little love I do have. It is hard to overcome those fears and love in the very teeth of them.

But I do try, because this really is the only love that matters. It's the way that God loves me.

Currently Listening Stand Up By Dave Matthews Band Gravedigger see related

solidifying thoughts

Currently Listening Give Up By The Postal Service Nothing Better see related

questions

its amazing how things never change.  i feel like the same things that i have been struggling with my whole life are the things i continue to face everyday.  i am 20 years old and i feel like my life will never end.  that can't be the way things are supposed to be.

you know, they say that the lost are to be pitied the most because the have no hope.  i disagree.  not that their position is not desperate and terrible--it is.  but i think the people that are to be pitied more are those who have found hope, who held it in their hands for a time, and then lost it.

isn't the man who was born without sight to be pitied far less than the man who had it once and now cannot see?  the former has no concept of what he has never had, while the latter feels every inch of his blinded state.

one who has lived always in darkness can have no concept of light, but oh, what of the one who once basked in the light and now dwells in darkness?

and what do you do when you begin to lose hope?  there are no words of wisdom or comfort that can rectify the situation.  no one can convince you to take hold once again of the hope you used to have--it is a choice that only you can make and no one can help you in it.

people say that God will come through, that he will always rescue, that he will always provide a way out.  i know that is true, but my heart betrays me.  what if he doesn't?  those are the words that silently echo through every thought and every action.  yet because i know it is true, because i once had hope, i cannot do other than live by truth.  it is an unfair position--to be forced to live life based upon a hope that you no longer believe in.

God will not let me walk away and yet he holds me in this state of suspended animation, this semblance of real life.  he holds the real thing before my face incessantly but when i reach out to take it he slaps my hand away. 

he calls me deeper into these woods i have followed him into, but there are no paths that i can find, though i grow weary with all my searching--now everything is growing dark and i find myself facing the fast approaching night alone.  what am i to do?  there are others i know that have found this path i am so desperatly searching for, yet all i hear are the echos of their mocking voices as i sit here in the growing twilight.  maybe i should strike out on my own, throw caution to the wind--anything is better than sitting in this cursed place with no hope of direction or rescue.  would that i could walk back down the path that led me here, but it too has disappeared from sight--there is no way back.  like alice lost in wonderland all paths have been swept away right from under my feet--i can just see the gleam of the cheshire cat's mocking smile.  maybe i should just lie down here and stop all my fruitless searching.  and yet the call, the one that brought me to this cursed place to begin with, still rings in my mind and heart--as soon as i stoop to rest it pierces me with its sweetness and compels me to renew the search.

this weariness overwhelms me--how am i too bear these burdens?  where are all the promises when hope dies?  what is there to live for when all you lived for is lost?

and yet the choice to give in is not mine to make--i am bound by oaths and covenants made long ago.  i must persist though the tasks set before me are beyond my accomplishing.  obedience is required though it is as impossible as breathing water.  i can do all things through christ who strengthens me--yes, but what if he does not?  will it be one failure after another endlessly and eternally?  my heart is only for one thing and yet that is the very thing denied me. 

how if hope turns into just one more impossible task?  how if hope itself becomes the very thing you dread in the very deepest parts of your heart?  what kind of hope is that?  and what then is left? 

and you know why i am posting this?  because nobody reads these things anymore anyway.