Blind Love

I'm sad to report that I missed the after Valentines Day chocolate sale. Darn! I did enjoy spending a good amount of time in the card aisle of stores reading through many creative ways of expressing love and appreciation. Did you know that there are now cards with neon lights in them? I remember being in awe of the musical celebration cards and now they've added flashing lights; it's like getting a mini party! As fun as these high fandangled cards are, I noticed a trend throughout all of the cards that perturbed me a little. Every single card that I read (and I unashamedly admit that I read a lot of them) presented some kind of praise for the receiver of the card, a list of reasons why they are loved.

I won't deny that I enjoy getting cards that praise the character and talents that I've worked hard to develop, but it there are times it can be real disheartening to get a message of love based on a standard I feel I have to pursue. That aisle of red and and pink sparkles, golden swirls and fancy words was pack full of pressure of needing to preform to be accepted and patches that cover mistakes instead of healing them (hint, hint card market, something has to change).  I often worry that if those outside of my family saw me when I am upset, stressed or angry that they would reject me, as if they see me through rosed colored glasses and their opinion of me is blinded. The second those glasses come off and they realize that I over react to little things can be highly critical and my singing makes dogs howl, will they hate me? If I'm not the graceful words on a valentines card, will I be left alone?

 

The most beautiful love letter I have ever read is in Isaiah 40-45. Here God reminds Israel of their sin and broken, unrepentant hearts, goes on to describes His power and awesomeness, and says that He longs to be with His beloved, that He claims them as His and will cleanse them. My favorite part of this love letter is in chapter 41, verse 14:

"Do not be afraid, you worm Jacob,

little Israel, do not fear,

for I myself will help you,"

declares the LORD your Redeemer

the Holy One of Israel.

Oh to be called a worm by God! To know that He understands that the world may put very little value on you and yet He claims you as His most precious, most loved creation! Not only is God's love for us not blinded to our imperfections, He promises to make us better. I recently read a very good article about the way love needs to push for a person to become better, not set standards of what is the best and seek to find it, unwilling to help in the work of developing that perfect love. I completely agree that perfect love is working for better and not measuring what is best.

You can call me crazy, but I much rather be told I'm a treasured worm then praised to be a perfect beauty on Valentines day. (Though I still love to get the chocolates!)

Uncontrollable love

I can not tell you how many movies I've seen in which at some point in the story the one of the characters says to another character that their love for them can't be helped, that no matter what either one of them does, their love can't be stopped-it's uncontrollable. I always felt that describing love in this way slightly diminished its value, as I would rather someone chose to love me and understood that loving someone takes more than just following spell-like feelings;

but it's true, love is uncontrollable.

We were specially made with the ability to love, our hearts are wired to do it without ceasing. Yes, we have the freedom to direct who or what we love, but it is impossible for us to stop loving. It is like the hose of a vacuum cleaner, while it is made to pull in specific things, it strongly pulls at anything within reach no matter which direction it's pointing. You have probably heard our love and need for God described as a 'God shaped hole in our heart'. This is a good analogy, but a better analogy is that we have a God shaped vacuum in our hearts, of which only God can completely fill. In our desperation to satisfy the pull we can direct our love vacuum towards anything in attempts to fill it, only to cover some (if any) of the need. Despite the fact that we find bigger and greater things to fill the vacuums in our hearts, there are always cracks around our self-made vacuum plugs that allow in pain and evil.

And here's the scariest part of the capabilities of our love, even if we are not trying to satisfy it with earthly reasoning and pleasures if we don't set our love on God first, then our hearts will pull in something else. If you are not loving and praising God, you are devoting your love and praise to something else; and you can't control it.

Is your uncontrollable love directed to the One who created it and can fill it; or is the vacuum of your heart whipping around faster and faster, or is it laying still, satisfied to direct all of its effort on tiny specks of dust which are far below what it was made to do?

Fearful Love

There's just something about attending a wedding. Maybe it's the joy getting to watch the love of the happy couple openly expressed and joining in the celebration with family and friends or maybe (at least for one little girl) it's getting to stay up later than one's usual bed time, eating way too many sweets, dressing up in a special princess dress and blowing bubbles over two people happily taking off on a new adventure. As a teenager as I attended several weddings of various family and friends, I would look at the bride and groom and the festivities going on around them thinking to myself, 'Someday that's going to be me. I'm going to reach the age point when all of my friends will be getting engaged and married; maybe even me.'

Eventually it happened, I grew up and my life is now filling up with the excitement of celebrating the blessing of love and commitment that those who are dear to me have found.Through the whirlwind of it all I have managed to stay single and happy. It is not that I never want to get married or have sworn off men forever, (though I do often joke about it) but rather I am somewhat selfishly pursuing a relationship with God and a deeper understanding of what perfect love is. My journey started when several people who I dearly loved were taken away from me and I began to question why I should risk the pain of love and ask what kind of love I was giving and have been given. I evaluated the desires and attachments of My Heart and found that my relationship with God was greatly lacking; and thus I set off to try to find out how God loves me and how I was made to love Him in return.

I thought it would be fun for me to celebrate February and Valentines with you by sharing what God has been teaching me about love - of all kinds; strong, crazy, lost, impatient, romantic perfect love. I'm starting this series out by asking you a question:

How do you love God?

It is easy to define how one serves God or how one praises Him; but is it even possible for us to love God? Sure, I can say that my actions are motivated by a love for God, but taking a step back and looking at the relationships people throughout history have had with God, the same behavior was driven by fears. We go about our lives doing good things, maybe even great things, praising God trying to redirect the glory to Him, but is this because we love God or because we are afraid of Him? Afraid that we are too awful for Him or afraid that God could become angry and turn His back on us if something is or isn't done; afraid of the possibility wasting our gifts, afraid of being alone. God is great and powerful, and His righteous wrath really, really scares me.  It would be foolish to ignore these traits of God, and even the apostles acknowledged His power. So how do you love such a great a terrible God?

The early Christians had to answer this very question in an environment that made them appear like they were ignorantly walking in a loins den. The world in which they lived in worshiped several gods and goddesses whose mystical powers was thought to cause great punishment if they ever became displeased. There were statues and temples for these gods everywhere and the people were so scared of offending any powerful being that they erected a alter to a 'unknown god'. It is no wonder that the idea of loving God caused thoughts of 'they're crazy' or 'their god obviously isn't powerful' to be made and voiced. In one of his letters, Paul assures the Christians in Corinthia that they weren't crazy but were blessed to know what it was to fear the Lord (2 Corinthias 5:11).

There is a very big difference between fearing God and being afraid of God. When you are afraid of God everything is driven on uncertainty and the panic of pain, but the fear of God is based on knowing God so well that you are in awe of Him; but the fear of the Lord is much more than knowledge if Him and His traits, because stacked up facts don't amount to much and have the potential to turn into hate. John explains that knowing God, openly accepting Him and pursuing a greater understanding of Him, leads to loving God.  (John 4:7-19)

For the longest time I tied a string around my heart and let God hold the other end of the string instead of letting Him hold my heart in His hands. I would follow the tugs on my heart to behave and love others as God would love them instead of loving them with God.

It is quite impossible for me to hug God, but I can learn about Him and seek to know Him more. To have my amazement about Him push me to know Him better; to become yet more amazed and want to know Him even more. To know Him so well that I can walk closer and closer to Him until I move perfectly along with Him (Micah 6:8).

Now this is love!