April 18, 2010

• Love, Impossible

  So I inhaled activated charcoal today. I'm pretty sure it wasn't meant for that purpose, nor did I do it on purpose.... and had it not been so HILARIOUS, I would've chalked that down as misery. Especially considering that I looked like a coal miner for a little bit. I love my students. (They had nothing to do with causing this. But I know they love me because they were so helpful in helping me clean the mess without making me feel like an idiot about it.) I'm still laughing about it.

  Anyway. Besides the fact that we had to be in SCHOOL on a weekend, things went pretty well.

  Until.

  We say, The Lord is never done with us, with the slight hope that He is perhaps MORE done with us than let's say with anyone else, or maybe better put, that maybe He would put off being 'never done with us' for just a little bit while you're taking to others about Him not being done with them.

  I was discussing some things with said Him as I walked home, and I found myself saying out loud, "I can't! It's too difficult... it's too difficult..." How is it possible that He is asking me to do more that I already am? To change? And to do the impossible: to love everyone as He loved them? I can't! And perhaps more sadly, I won't! I don't want to!

  Isn't that silly?

  I don't want to love someone when they're being ignorant or rude or ever the worse, annoying and irritating. I don't want to love someone who has destroyed lives and has no self control. I don't want to love people who don't understand me and box me up and hole me in a pocket that is completely not my dimensions.

  Scratch that. I can. I can love them in principle. But love them? Like Jesus loves us? No...

  There's a story of a woman in Rwanda who took in two children as her own. It only deviates from a typical adoption story in that these children murdered her husband and kids in front of her eyes, mauling her in the process.

  This is not the love of principle. This is the love of God. God does not love in principle. He loves in deed, and in truth, as should we (1 John 3: 18)

  "Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another." (1 John 4:11)

  We ought also. John 15:13 says "Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." And so Christ did for us... and what of us now? How are we to bridge the impossible gap from the realm or our world to where He wants us to be?

  "Hereby know we that we dwell in him, and he in us, because he hath given us of his Spirit." (1 John 4:13)

  This is the Spirit of God: this spirit of Love, of self-sacrificial, natural, earnest care for our fellow mankind and for our God. The only practical, principled part of this love is the manifestation of it in the fruits of the Spirit: kindness... gentleness.... longsuffering....

  But no. We can pray, and fast, and study, and write, and read, and speak....

  But suffer long? And for who? These mangy masses of sub-par human beings... the kind who never listen, the kind who never have nice things to say... the kind who abuse you and others...

  And even now, I know that Jesus loved them, and died for them all. He would have died for ONE PERSON to have the CHANCE to taste of Heaven's glory. And who are we to steal that from them?

  Yes, God hates sin, but not as we do. We hate sin in a way that a dog hates being beaten. It is all we know. We hat sin in the same way a man hates his addictions. It has him. We hate sin and yet we cherish it.

  God hates sin but loved the sinner. He sees through the facade and loves with a greater love than we have ever known and then calls us to it. We can't do it. I can't do it. I don't even WANT to do it. It's frustrating. I want to want to. Sometimes I think I do and then God sends me a person that reminds me that where I'm at can't even be called "Square One." More like sliding down the mountain while taking out the steps that got you as far as you did.

  And so there He is. The One and Only Solution. Don't tell me God doesn't want us to love the unlovable, the ignorant, the mean, the dirty. He calls us to love them all. Not only the bum in the corner, but the dude who impregnated a 15 year-old-girl before he turned 18 himself. Not only the Hitler-likes, but the person next door, next in line, next on the sink. Not the parent who calls me at 8pm on a weekend...

  This kind of call brings up the most vehement resistance from the Old Man. Not the trial-and-temptation explosive kind, but the most disgusting, writhing, zombie-esque, ugly struggle. It's as though Old Man has taken off his "I'm done dead or dying" mask and throws a party in the basement with subwoofers that threaten to tear down the roof.

  Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.
  It is not all hugs and kisses and butterflies.
  It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrong.
  And if God kept all records of our wrongdoing?
  Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

  And the truth is, we can't. It IS too difficult... this is utter surrender, an utter miracle, and utter divine projection into the core of our souls and deliverance from the "oh wretched man that I am."

  May He enable this in us today, and every day...

  • 9:25 pm
  • 1 Comment