It's been a while since I last wrote a post. My excuse is that I had an exercise in tilling a potential friendship, and I put all my efforts into that. And though it didn't work out (a complete disaster!), I figured some things out. So it wasn't a total loss. In fact, I learned more in the past few months than I have in a long time.
The first thing that I've figured out, and the subject of this post, is that humans are built to resonate Love. We are built to resonate Love, because this is how God has commanded us to fulfill the Law.
Here are the facts:
1. Love is so necessary for living.
Love is indescribable as a concept. It can be felt but not encompassed. Love is more than a feeling, more than a thought, and more than words or actions. When the Father sent His Son to die for the sins of those unworthy to even behold His face, can this be explained by a single word? What does it mean when a mother holds her newborn babe, or when a daughter touches the newly-hewn gravestone of her mother?
Love is from God. It is therefore Holy, and it is therefore Good. And from God, it is necessary for us to have it. And I wonder how many problems of this world would be neutralized if people took to heart what it means to live, and why we live.
I am beginning to figure out that we live to experience Love. We live because we have the capacity to Love and in this we have the beginning of an understanding of our existence. Often I go back to the Greatest Commandments of which there are but two, and both involve Love. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. And you shall love your neighbor as yourself. These are imperatives, not anything optional or conditional.
Why do the two Greatest Commandments both involve the same verb? Apostle Paul says that Love is the fulfillment of the Law, and so we must consider why God has placed so much emphasis on Love. I think it is because we cannot live without it. Love gives meaning to our lives, and Love gives direction to our paths. Love also nourishes us, and when it is given to us, we bask in our Father's glory, because of the fulfillment of the Law. And so, we are given the tools for our own survival, and for our own meaning. We are to love the LORD with all of ourselves, and we are to love those around us.
2. Right now, I am a poor vessel to hold Love.
I do not accept love easily, and so I do not give love easily. Both need to be corrected sooner than later. Not accepting love easily means that I have less love to give to others. It makes me suspicious and cynical, it makes me bitter and angry, it makes me tired, scared and weak. Not accepting love easily means that I cannot grow easily, and it means that I have been lost without purpose. And as critically, I have only a little love to give, unable to fulfill the most basic of Commandments. What a tragedy!
Often, I have wondered why I have so few "true" friends. At last count, not including my wife, I have a single "true' friend. But I think I have figured it out to some degree. And I don't think I am going to like what I figured out. I think the reason I have so few friends because my definition of what makes a "friend" includes too many extraneous things. All that matters is whether you love that person, and whether that person is able to love you back. And everything else that I use as a filter.... those things are not about friendship at all, but are merely elements of vanity.
We see ourselves in the friends we choose, either as contrast to ourselves or as mirrors to ourselves. We see common links and we enjoy the feeling of closeness and of privity. We share common memories and common hopes, struggles and so on. These are not necessarily bad things, but when we use these filters to screen out people from love, then we are in direct disobedience to God and to his Greatest Commandments. How does it feel to Sin? Well, it feels a lot like I do sometimes - cynical, lonely, bitter and tired.
3. It is a tough thing, but Love isn't to be discriminated and held for some and not for others.
This is a tough thing, and I have not much (or too much) to say about this right now.
More later,
-David
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
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