Sterile Love

 

When I am at my most honest, I realize I know nothing about Love.  

What does love look like?  It’s a question I’ve been pondering.

God has been teaching me about Love.  His love.  Real Love.   Love that moves past barriers.  Love that forgets self.   Love that brought a Savior.

If all of life comes down to love then tell me…what does love look like?

I have been asking God to teach me to Love Him. As I ask I realize that Loving Him can not be separated from loving others.

Then I saw Him there, hanging on tree looking at me.

And as I attempt to Love others I realize how truly inept I am at Loving Him, at Loving at all.

He had arms wide open, heart exposed.  Arms wide open….He was bleeding, bleeding.

I spent some time meditating on the deep Love of God this Wednesday.   If you have been following this blog you realize it is new thing to me- this understanding that God loves me.   I am realizing that the Love of God is a wild thing.   It is not a tame, sterile love that lives only in the hallowed halls of stain glass windows.  It is a crazy thing, beating on the doors of convention, causing me to question all that I once believed.   Crushing me while at the same time it heals me.

That evening my husband and I traveled with our children to Grand Rapids to listen to my brother in law preach at the Love Feast.  As we sat at our meal of french toast and sausage with the homeless, the drunks, the lost…a woman walked in.  It was obvious that she had wet her pants and to my shame I must admit to you that I lost my appetite.  I sat convicted as I watched one of the Stockbridge Interns embrace her without a moments hesitation.  And as I watched the Love of God work itself out in flesh I thought of all the work that must be done so that I may learn this Love.  It is with a broken and humble heart that I recount that moment…knowing that in my arrogance I believed that I was somehow more clean than her…forgetting the sin that cost a Savior so much.

You shall love Me….with arms wide open, heart exposed…bleeding, sometimes bleeding

And with a gentle voice that is so like God, healing even as He wounds, God reminds me of the Love that reached into the gutter and dwelt among the filth to save me.

And the King will answer and say to them, Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to me.

Matt. 25:40

 

Words in italics are from the song Arms Wide Open by Misty Edwards.