Loving anything, is an act of faith.
There are no guarantees, it is a gift that we are to give without thought of return.
It is a way of walking and it must be walked forward. If you don't walk forward in love you will stop walking. Because there will be all kinds of things you could stop and look at that would seek to prove to you that walking in love is futile. Disappointments, unforeseen choices, sin and the unpredictable course of the river of life.
Love is brutally simple and the highest of all calls that is sounded form the lowest of all opportunities. It is potentially present in each activity, each moment and every person. It calls us to the painful and concrete realities of this world, it beckons from the wounds that can't always be healed. Love is like water pouring over rocks...it is a slow change.
It stands at our side and constantly whispers but doesn't make promises.
2 comments:
I really like that. I suspect if we all had crystal balls and could see each act of love that was to go unappreciated,(for a season) we would have a far harder time loving. Truth is, hard as we try, we generally want something in return for loving. Don't you think?
We drop friendships like a bad habit if they don't pay back.
Deeds go undone to those we know to be unappreciative, like the ten lepers.
To say we love purely because He asks us to is....well difficult.
A guy named Bovee said "Our first love and last love is self-love."
Cynical but largely true.
We want to be loved in return, better said by Mad. de Girardin--
"To love one who loves you, to admire one who admires you, in a word, to be the idol of ones's idol, is exceeding the limits of human joy, it is stealing fire from heaven."
God will not have us idolize nor be idolized, inconsistent with love. The following thought regarding romantic love, I think can be applied to some degree to compassionate love.
"That arch flatterer, with whom all the petty flatterers have intelligence, is a man's self: certainly the lover is more; for there was never a proud man thought so absurdly well of himself as the lover doth of the person loved; and therefore it was well said, 'That it is impossible to love and be wise.'
I may misundertand his meaning, but what I get from it is; love, whatever its motives, is a very difficult affair, playing to our pride and ego, and there are so many emotional dynamics to it that we are easily deceived by it though our intentions are good.
So loving takes much maturity, of which I find myself embaressingly short of, but even with its losses and turns, is where I want to dwell.
Forgive me if these thoughts are a bit sketchy, it is higher than I.
Great thoughts Dad.
I couldn't help but think of Mother Teresa in this discussion.
She embodied what I think I was trying to say.
Post a Comment