Reckless Love
As a way to set the intention and tone for this journey, I chose to remind myself about love as this month’s mindful message. Not just because it’s February, but I find that so many of us find ourselves seeking love and its pursuit, and so many of us end up hurting, falling, and just simply getting it wrong. Hearing story after story, including my own, I realize that we’ve taken this great, magnificent, infinite choice and placed it into this self-serving, measurable, static box. Love is wider than holding an “I love you” sign at the airport (and paying $20 to park). Love is longer than “baecations” and the third-year of your long-distance relationship. Love is higher than the joint bank account that pays the mortgage. Love is deeper than even going to church together. It has to be. Because no matter the situation–renting that first apartment, long FaceTime chats, waking up at three a.m. because it’s your turn to get the baby, or a really good pot of gumbo–the only thing that often remains is the memory, the feeling, and prayerfully the love. I’m learning (please read learning clearly) that love is a pouring out of everything that you have, everything that’s good and has served you well, as a commitment to the transformation of someone else; not in a way that dims your light or is abusive or isn’t reciprocal but in a way that allows all of the brightness of you to serve the light of another. I cannot imagine a more exquisite, near impossible feat.
But the good news, and I do mean the good news, is that in the sacrifice on the cross and the life and work of Jesus Christ, we have the best example of authentic love that we could ever hope for on this side of heaven. Can you imagine how recklessly someone would have to love you to seek to take away every bad, petty, jealous, narcissistic, dark part of you by sacrificing everything they have? For five seconds, can you feel the weight of having lived a perfect, blameless life to die nailed to a tree in your early 30s next to some petty thieves no less, for the life and well-being of a bunch of children that won’t even say your name? Can you feel that? Do you know what that means? Do you realize that no matter what your circumstance is, that love is choosing someone over and over again? Have you ever loved someone like that? Have you ever even thought to? I absolutely have not.
But, I’m growing, and I have a blueprint. 1 Corinthians 13, among many chapters and lessons in the story of the Bible, is a tried and true testament of a real love. When Paul tells the people of Corinth, a real lustful, self-centered group of folks, that no matter what gifts, faith, or money they have in this world, that they are nothing without love, I don’t think they fully comprehended any more than those of us in 2019. The love that Paul describes is an eternal love no matter the struggles that it faces (because if Paul had to name that love wasn’t envious or boastful or easily angered, there HAD to have been some struggles that love had to rise above just as Jesus suffered much and was raised still); that love is ALWAYS in patience, that love is ALWAYS in honoring others, that love is ALWAYS persevering, that love will surpass knowledge, that love grows up children into women and men, that love is the infinite journey to being fully known and fully complete. “For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known (1 Corinthians 13:12)” is both an immense reassurance and a loving wake-up call to us all.
What are seeking to leave with those you encounter? What do you hope stands in the gap for your name and your work on this earth? I encourage you for the rest of this month to both set the intention for your legacy and to remind you that love in all of its hopes and glories should lead the way. As for me and my house, love is both the light and the path (not the destination), and it’s the only thing you should take with you anyway.
