This comment was left anonymously on the previous post entitled "Love." I confess that firstly I felt angry. How dare this person leave such a message without letting me know who they were!? Well, I enabled anonymous comments so that people wouldn't have to have an account to leave a comment. Then I felt sad that they missed the point. As days passed, I realized that they totally got it! Of course we are incapable of complete God-like love. I suppose a few humans have come closer than most. Only Jesus was both God and man and thus able to give us a picture of the love God has in mind. And the commenter is 100% correct. "Love is pain." Jesus loved us to the pain of death. And in His death we are offered the gift of salvation and eternal life with Him the greatest Lover of all time.
Paul teaches us that we are not to use grace as an excuse for sinning. (see Romans 6) I think that the leap to not use incapableness as an excuse for not loving is not so far a jump. As long as I live and breathe on this earth, there will be sin in my life. However, I can choose to NOT pursue it. NOT to blatantly choose it. Pray for wisdom and discernment in my day to day activities to live as God has planned. I can also choose to love. To pursue love. To blatantly choose love. To pray for wisdom and discernment to love as God has planned. As long as I live and breathe on this earth, I will fall short of loving like God loves.
As a woman who is striving to grow closer to Him, a result is that I want to love more and more like Him. I know that I can't and won't be filled up with reciprocal human love. Do I cherish the human love I receive? You bet! Can I count on it satiating my God-created need for love? No way! ONLY God can do that. And it is something that I have to consciously work at daily. There are deep, deep caverns longing to be filled. Ice cream won't do it. Brody's hand won't do it. Iris' hugs won't. Nor a purring cat or loving husband. Trying to let other things fill those cavernous longings will only lead to further disappointment and frustrations. Letting God fill them, now that brings desire. Desire to be in His Presence more and more. Desire to bless Him by loving others the best I can.
To sum up, yes, love is (can be) pain. Yes, we are incapable of complete G0d-love. But do it anyway! Dive deep into the life-love of the Father. And in return, as a response, Love Large!
Paul teaches us that we are not to use grace as an excuse for sinning. (see Romans 6) I think that the leap to not use incapableness as an excuse for not loving is not so far a jump. As long as I live and breathe on this earth, there will be sin in my life. However, I can choose to NOT pursue it. NOT to blatantly choose it. Pray for wisdom and discernment in my day to day activities to live as God has planned. I can also choose to love. To pursue love. To blatantly choose love. To pray for wisdom and discernment to love as God has planned. As long as I live and breathe on this earth, I will fall short of loving like God loves.
As a woman who is striving to grow closer to Him, a result is that I want to love more and more like Him. I know that I can't and won't be filled up with reciprocal human love. Do I cherish the human love I receive? You bet! Can I count on it satiating my God-created need for love? No way! ONLY God can do that. And it is something that I have to consciously work at daily. There are deep, deep caverns longing to be filled. Ice cream won't do it. Brody's hand won't do it. Iris' hugs won't. Nor a purring cat or loving husband. Trying to let other things fill those cavernous longings will only lead to further disappointment and frustrations. Letting God fill them, now that brings desire. Desire to be in His Presence more and more. Desire to bless Him by loving others the best I can.
To sum up, yes, love is (can be) pain. Yes, we are incapable of complete G0d-love. But do it anyway! Dive deep into the life-love of the Father. And in return, as a response, Love Large!
3 comments:
Sorry. I should not have left such a negative comment, much less anonymously.
My comments were heartfelt, but out of place here. Perhaps one day we can sit down and discuss the nature of love and all that. But it was wrong of me to interject that debate into your exercise in faith.
Lara, thanks for all this. It's as close to sitting across the table from you as I can get right now. Your wise words are part of the reason I miss you, so this helps. SO glad you are continuing. Let's agree NOT to communicate just in times of crisis.
Anonymous, still reading and still anonymous? Painful is one of the things love is, even God's love can bring pain as he corrects us and shapes us into the better person He sees we can be. Change is loss. Loss hurts.
The love of friends and family that I know is motivated by God's love for each of those individuals is of a different quality altogether than
any love I had known before. Can't really explain it but to say that when you know a heart is earnestly focused on God and His plans, what comes out of that heart can be trusted, even if it's imperfect, even hurtful in it's expression.
Whoever you are anonymous, please investigate God's love for you and know that for all the ways love has hurt you there is a perfect lover of YOU, the way you were fearfully and wonderfully made. God cares enough about you, personally, to want the best for you, even if it hurts.
Plug yourself in with people who are trying to love God as he loves them. It won't be perfect but it will be transforming and you will see the difference! If you think you are there now and you don't feel it, try again 'til you do. God has a community out there special for you. We moved cross country six months ago and are breaking in our new warm fuzzy growth place here among new friends, after some effort. Church is where you find it.
One more thing to anonymous, this is the perfect place to interject that debate, even if it gets Lara going for a minute :) Faith is required for love. Even if it's 'simply' faith in a man or woman, opening yourself up to love someone means you have faith that they will do something back that feels good and right to you, does something for you. I think what Lara is trying to say is that where you choose to focus that faith has a huge impact on your capacity to love and your sense of being loved.
It is most definitely possible to feel you are the object of the kind of love Lara described, even if nobody is capable of loving that way. Your perception of being loved also changes, when those who love you do so for the right reasons. Their heart really is in the right place as the old saying goes. When you learn that you can take that to the bank, that really ends up being all that matters.
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