Love

It’s almost Valentine’s Day, so it seems appropriate that I have been thinking about love lately. My husband are going through the book ‘Real Marriage’ by Mark and Grace Driscoll and that’s got me thinking about love. I see marriages falling apart around me, again thinking about love. Just what is it? There are a few descriptions we have used to describe it over the lifetimes of humans, but they all seem to fall short. Is it a feeling, an action, a choice? We think we are enlightened in changing how we look at love, thinking we have it all figured out, but really we only know a fraction of it.

First, ‘love is a feeling’. That sounds archaic. We debunked that long ago and replaced it with other, seemingly appropriate descriptions, but it still stands. We ‘fall’ in love simply because we feel something for another person. We divorce because we don’t feel love for the other person anymore. We abort because we just don’t feel love for the ‘thing’ growing inside of us. This idea still permeates our society in how our girls dress, and our many reasons for hurting and abandoning others. In telling a child that ‘Mommy doesn’t love daddy anymore’ as the reason for a divorce, we are teaching our kids that love is a feeling that comes and goes and set them up for a life of attempting to elicit feelings of love in others. It is a futile attempt, because lust, affection, and sexual arousal are all feelings, love is not.

Second, ‘love is a choice.’ Nice, but not really accurate when it comes to our human interpretation. That implies that it’s okay to choose not to love someone else. Yes, it sounds really good when you say you choose to love someone else, ‘in spite of…’, however choosing not to love someone is a lousy excuse to end a relationship. But we are not called to choose to love. 'We love because He first loved us." 1 John 4:19

Third, ‘love is an action’. Okay, but actions can be misconstrued and manipulated. And in our imperfect version of love that can turn nasty as one person acts out love while the other does not.

So again, what is love? First of all, it’s a command. In several places in the Bible (Lev 19:18, Matt 19:19, Matt 22:39, Mar 12:31, Mar 12:33, Luke 10:27, Rom 13:9, Gal 5:14 and James 2:8) we are commanded, not suggested or given a choice, to love our neighbors as ourselves. It is called the greatest commandment. He was not just telling Israelites to love other Israelites. He was saying love EVERYONE as you love yourself. We love ourselves very much, there is no denying that. Jesus reiterates it, reinforcing the fact that it wasn’t just for Jews, but for all to love all. He also goes so far to say to love our enemies. Yes, those who hurt us, those who hurt others. Hitler, Musolini, Jeffery Dahmer. How do we love others as we love ourselves? Humility. Romans 12:3 says not to think too highly of ourselves but to have sober judgment of ourselves. So we love others as a measure of how we love ourselves, then tone it down a notch to think more highly of others than we do of ourselves. It is summed up in the ‘golden rule’ or as I like to call it, Matt 7:12, ‘Do unto others as you would have them do to you.‘ Treat others as you want to be treated. You want to be loved, love others.

As demonstrated by Jesus, love is also sacrifice. John 15:13 says that laying down your life for your friends shows that you love them. Jesus sacrificed his life to show His love for us (Rom 5:8). It doesn’t mean that we need to die to show love for others, but we do need to sacrifice. Sacrifice ourselves. Our desires, needs, resources, happiness, frustrations, etc for the good of others. Doesn’t sound appealing does it? Sounds hard. Think of others first, sacrifice what we want to make others happy? Is it any wonder people focus on themselves and work to make themselves happy, abandoning those things and people that don’t. Love is HARD. But it doesn’t have to be.

1 John 4:8 says that GOD is love. God. Not feelings, not actions, not choices, not our hopes and desires. God. He embodies it. He expresses it. He fills us with it. He sacrificed because of it. He allows us to go through difficult things because love means not letting us wallow in the muck of our current selves. Love means hoping for the best of who you can be. He says to ‘Be Holy as I Am Holy.’ Holy is God. Love is God. Be love as He is love. BE love. Don’t feel love, don’t do love, don’t choose love. BE love. God is spirit and God is love, therefore the Holy spirit is also love.

Love does require choice - a choice for God, to let Him dwell in you. Love does require action - sacrificing our desires to let His love shine through. If God is in you, love is in you. If God is not, you are doing love on your own and that means it plays by your rules and will never satisfy. It is a counterfeit of love.

Love is not complicated. It’s God.

Plans

As a mom, I have learned that with parenting come many lessons to learn. The other day,  my father-in-law came to stay the night with us while on a business trip.  He was going to be arriving after my son's bed time, so I told Owen he would have a surprise in the morning when he woke up.  He cheered and went to bed very excited. He was awake early that morning and had obviously been anticipating the surprise because he asked right away when I walked in his room if his surprise was here.  I said it was and he asked if it was certain engines he had been asking for from the 'Thomas and Friends' collection. I told him it wasn't and took him downstairs to see 'Pops' and though he was happy to see him, he seemed distracted. My father-in-law told him there was something in the living room for him and Owen ran excitedly to see what the 'real' surprise was.  The gift was a book, which Owen normally loves, but he looked very disappointed and was fighting back tears.  When I asked him what was wrong, he said he wanted 'Bash, Dash and Ferdinand.'  My heart broke for him.  He had apparently interpreted that the surprise was these engines and was sad when it didn't pan out the way he had hoped.  He eventually rebounded and loves the book, but the initial disappointment was deep.

At that moment, I felt for him.  That same morning, I had found out that I was not pregnant for the 10th time in as many months.  I was sorely disappointed. No matter how many times I have that happen, I still anticipate ahead of time and am discouraged after.  As I watched my son's reaction, I felt God speaking to me.  What I saw in my reaction to my son's situation was God's.  We usually feel upset and angry when we don't get what we want or especially what we are promised.  I think we do because we feel like God is indifferent to our disappointment and heartache, but I don't believe He is. When Owen's lip came out and he fought for composure, I wanted nothing more than to make him feel better and pull out the engines I have stashed away for birthday gifts.  They aren't what he was hoping for but I didn't like seeing him so sad. I didn't do that, and God won't either. He won't give us less than what He has promised us or give it to us at the wrong time.  I believe He hurts with us.  He wants us to trust and rely on Him, but I don't think He's saying, "Get over it". He feels what we are feeling, but He knows what will come from the disappointment and the waiting.

The other thing I learned from this was that we often anticipate or expect certain things in our lives that are not what God wants for us and miss out on the things He does have for us.  We tend to see ourselves as the director of our lives even as we follow God, interpreting verses like Jeremiah 29:11 in our own words. Instead of 'For I know the plans I have for you..." we subconsciously thing 'For I know (Not God) what would make me happy..." Just like my son overlooked the blessing in a new book in his own idea of what the perfect gift would be, we can often overlook unsolicited, unrequested blessings from God in looking for what we think we want and need in our lives. Sometimes the blessing is nothing more than a change in our perspective, attitude or faith.  Sometimes that comes through difficult situations.  Yes,we should dream, dream big even, but we need to also keep our eyes on what God has for us.  He wants good for us, He wants us to be like Him, and He knows what will happen. 

As I looked at my own situation in wanting another pregnancy to happen, I have to remind myself that He made a promise to me and He will fulfill that in His time and His way.  He has a perfect time for every person to be born and that's His prerogative.  It doesn't necessarily make it easier, but it keeps me focused on Him.  Will I stop being disappointed with negative pregnancy tests? Probably not, but I will continue to turn back to Him. Because He has plans and they're better than anything I could ever think or imagine. 

Creation Whispers - are you listening?

I have been told that I see God in everything. That's probably because I see Him in His creation and because I learned to look for Him in everything I see. Nature has always been fascinating to me, so much so that I fell in love with biology my first class I took in high school and then continued it as my major in college.  In college, studying God's creation brought me closer to Him and taught me more about Him than I had ever known before.  I saw His creativity and imagination, his mind at work and His love for us.  He created this world to be pleasurable for us - to be aesthetically pleasing and to have every resource we need. His creation shows us who He is and that He does indeed exist, if we only look at the miracles and wonders of what He has created.  It's not just in the animals and plants, but in the land, in weather, in the night sky.  God is the original scientist. He created biology, zoology, embryology, astonomy, geology, meteorology - every scientific field you can imagine, He created the basis for it.  It was put there for us to enjoy, study and to draw us to Him.

  I see hearts in many places in nature and have photographed many. God shows us He loves us in everything we see around us, but even more so in the act of giving His Son to die for us. He didn't live in comfort, shy away from the disgusting or die peacefully. He lived and died our worst nightmare and He did it for us.