Love.
Love is a tricky thing.
We refer to love as a commodity. We say that love is rare. We say that it is better to have loved and lost than not at all. We love our pet. We love chocolate. We love our new car or gadget or gizmo.
Then along comes the one. You know THE one. The one who makes your heart beat faster and makes your palms get all sweaty. The one who you can't wait to see or talk to. The one who you wish you could be around forever. Your every thought is consumed with them. You text. You talk. You date.
Yet, we use this word "love" to define the experience that we have and the new reality that we are experiencing as we mesh our life with this one other person's life. We call them soul mates. Our perfect match-- a match made in Heaven. We say that they complete us.
Then there's the other side of love that says that we can fall out of love. As if love was something we could happen into. As if love were a serendipitous accident. We convince ourselves that this once perfect soul mate must not have been the one because we don't feel the same way anymore. The one who completed us no longer completes us and this new upgraded model completes us better. We even call sex "making love."
Always searching. Never satisfied.
We love our new job but get a new one two years later. We love our new wife but get a new one when she becomes a nag. We love our new husband but get a new one when he becomes a cheating, lazy pig. We love our friends until they piss us off.
On and on it goes.
Maybe love as we are accustom to it in this human experience isn't really love. Maybe it's just a word that we use to describe something that is counterfeit to the real thing because the real thing is truly beyond our reality, beyond our words. While we have hints of soul satisfying love and whispers of what love could be, we don't really find what we truly need because we look for it in humans who are just as screwed up and unable to fulfill us as we are.
Unaware of our own inability to love one another well, we wound each other in unexpected ways. Don't believe me? Let's try a few questions...
When was the last time you loved someone you liked?
When was the last time you loved someone you mildly disliked?
When was the last selfless act that you did for someone you downright despise?
When was the last time you did what someone else was supposed to do and didn't demand credit for your actions?
When was the last time you voluntarily gave up time in your schedule for someone else? And didn't let them know that they put you out?
When was the last time you did a job that wasn't your responsibility and didn't complain about it... to anyone?
When was the last time you made cookies for the next door neighbor that drives you absolutely nuts? When was the last time you smiled at them (and not in that "this is my polite smile" way)?
When was the last time you asked for a person's name? A homeless person's name? Your garbage person's name?
When was the last time you asked someone how they were doing... and meant it, really meant it?
When was the last time you told the over-worked, under-paid person at your favorite restaurant or store "Thank you"? When was the last time you asked them how they were doing and meant it?
When was the last time you got eyeball-to-eyeball with someone and just listened?
If you are like me, there are probably a few of these questions that you have done and I celebrate that with you. What a cool God thing to be a part of when someone feels God's love through you (whether you are aware of it or not). But then, if you are like me, there are probably several of these questions that made you wince (even just a little).
Maybe, just maybe, these question serve as a reference point to what love is at its core. A decision of sacrifice; to view another person as more important than ourselves.
In Scripture, John give us a glimpse into the love he encountered as he lived alongside Jesus for three years. He writes...
"This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters." 1 John 3:16
Wait a tick. Let's look at that again.
"This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us." Did you catch that? Jesus laid down his life. It was a decision. And what did that decision entail? Sacrifice.
Love is not a feeling? Well, it can involved feelings but ultimately it is a decision. But that makes sense right? It really is the only plausible explanation for our human experience. If love were as fleeting as feelings then it would be a commodity. Then it would make sense that we could fall out of love because we decided to move on. They are no longer "worth the pain" or "worth the trouble." We get inconvenienced by the sacrifice of love and decide to move on.
I find in interesting that if we back up a bit in Scripture to John's first letter, smartly named John, we find the following verse:
"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son..." John 3:16a
God loved the world-- us, humanity-- so He gave up His son. Decision. Sacrifice. God decides that we are worth it and decides to give up his Son so that we can know how great His love truly is.
Here again:
Jesus said, "Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends." John 15:13
And again:
"This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins." 1 John 4:10
Tired of all the Scripture from John? Okay, then let's go further back into the olden days when God wasn't loving and just full of wrath. ((sarcasm))
"Long ago the LORD said to Israel: 'I have loved you, my people, with an everlasting love. With unfailing love I have drawn you to myself.'" Jeremiah 31:3
So God loves and Jesus loves and we have a broken form of love that often doesn't much feel like the real thing. So what do we do?
"And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them." 1 John 4:16
"As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love." John 15:9,10
The more we choose to love Jesus and focus all our passions and giftedness and talents into loving Him, the more our lives will reflect the love, real love that Jesus demonstrated. Our core being will be transformed into fulfilled selfless lives that radiate love. When we willingly give up our demand to be satisfied and lay down our lives to Jesus He frees us from our love-starved ego and self-driven pride to fill us overflowingly with His life and love.
"I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen." Ephesian 3:16-21