What compelled this?
Instant tragedy. It was the call that no one is ever prepared for. A new friend was dealt the card of instant tragedy. Heart wrenching loss on planet earth. A loved one there in one moment, expected to be there in the future ones, but ripped out in the next. Ditching the afternoon nap we anxiously headed to the hospital.
What do you say? What do you do? Use the empty over-used phrases, "I'm sorry for your loss, He's in a better place, Can I pray for you, I will be praying for you, and at least he didn't suffer" Hell no. That would be like putting a band-aid on the bleeding out jugular.
Helpless.
There was nothing that I knew to do or say, no website, no app, no prayer, no recipe...all I knew was to just go. And so we went. Unprepared. Without words. Or any idea how to comfort. A quick, "Jesus be yourself in us 'cuz we have no idea what to freaking do," prayer was lifted to heaven on the short, yet this moment seemingly long, drive to the emergency room. We pulled into the hospital parking lot. I nearly threw the door open, which sent me into a feeling that I was in one of those badly made LMN movies, before my husband had time to stop. She was standing outside the hospital hovered over in the drizzling rain, smoking, and trying to call family and friends between gut wrenching sobs.
As I went to her, I continued to feel I was living out some script that had been written for me; one that I just knew, but had never read. All fear literally left. I began walking towards her, a purpose driven walk that turned into an all out run. I was compelled to run to her. Something in me had to run to her. I reached her and I didn't even think what to do, I just grabbed her tiny face in my hands and looked into her desperate eyes oozing with shock and grief; desperate for relief. I kissed her forehead, and held her close as her entire body sobbed from the depths of her shattered soul.
It was just love. Pure. Holy. Untainted. Self-less. Abandoned. Confident. Jesus Love.
A week later, I'm reliving this moment in my mind. Processing. At first I laughed a little thinking of me kissing another woman. Then the whole moment becomes beautiful as the Lord sparks my mind to wonder....
What if I loved like that in all situations. Took off the expectations, the fear of rejections, the judgements, the self-protection, and preservation, the saving face, the pretenses of... what will others think of me, the need to be polished, and planned, and well spoken, what if it was just raw and real and authentic. The loving in the dailyness, the scheduled, the chaotic, over taskedness of everyday.
What if I woke up every morning and greeted my family with that milk chocolate love? And kept the chocolate fountain of love flowing all day everyday? That love that has no expectations, no ulterior motives, no desire except to love. What if the love that naturally flowed out of me to others ran to brokenness and didn't avoid it? What if it the love I gave out daily was confident to hold another's face in my hands and kiss their forehead in the rain for all the world to see? What if I didn't just love like that when it was critical and life and death was involved?
What if we all loved like that and it was regular, habitual, "normal?" How different would life be if we valued humans with that deep; unscripted... abandoning-self- love...Jesus kind of love...You see because in all reality it wasn't me who kissed the forehead of the grieving woman outside the ER doors, it was Him. For those who are in Christ, who have chosen the path that trades our guilty sentence of sin, for his live, he also promises to have His Spirit, the Holy Spirit, come and live on the inside of us.
And it has to be Him when we love that way. It has to. I am epically selfish, constantly self protecting, and for sure don't have a habit of kissing girls unless they are family. My nature is contrary to His. His is pure, constant, always right, always true, always just, and His love doesn't seek it's own way.
My love mostly seek it's own way.
My love loves me more than the broken world around me. My love wants my life to be orderly, pretty, polished, and blessed, my love wants others to think I have it all together. My love doesn't want to roll up its sleeves and get messy in grief, in brokenness, in poverty, in sin..whether it be my own or God forbid someone else. My love wants what is best for me and the furthering of my woman made kingdom.
Thanks be! Clearly I have been taken to the side of grace. Only through Jesus. Him. Only Him. That's so why Jesus said in the bible if anyone wants to come after me he must deny himself take up his cross and follow me. So basically he's saying. I need to die, that me- loving, limited- love- to- you woman, needs to have the air sucked out of her. I need to embrace my tool of execution (take up my cross) and follow Him. Follow him where? To life. He's not going to suck the selfish sin infested, comfortable christian with church pew butt life out of us and leave us hanging..We are going somewhere...Where?
To Love. To Him. To His Heart. And that's where we find it. The place where we kiss a hurting soul, where we gaze upon our newborn sleeping and touch the still innocent skin and heaven comes and floods you with an eternal moment that you capture forever, where you love a smelly homeless person, hold an orphan as she wipes her snotty nose on your clothes. Where you enter a blind, wreaking, and hungry bed-ridden man's home; working hard at his earth exit- yet you worship with him and the Glory of the Lord fills his one room home and you see him as the richest man you have ever known. It's where you Go as Jesus has said; to visit orphans, to bring His glory and love to them and one of them ends up kneeling beside you and washing your feet. The place where your soul weeps at it's utter failings of holiness and repent with groans only to find it more, thick Jesus love flowing for you in your pile of crocodile tears. The place that compels and burns a desire in you; not for the bling bling in the word that is the constant carrot in front of you, but for the unseen, the forever, promises to come that involve the now of faith and sacrifice and humility.
This love runs into darkness. This love dies on a cross after being beaten so brutally there is no recognition. This love hangs there and keeps loving with every human heart beat that has ever been or will ever be on his mind until it is finished. This love that stays pinned to nails with mocks and jeers from humanity; when the holy breath in him could wipe them all out. This love pleads with His Father to forgive them. This love that breathed a last human body breath, descended into hell, and retrieved the keys of sin and death. This love that didn't end at death; but everlasting life. Jesus Love.
That is it. My spin on love as it has been worked out in my life recently....but even better..His Word here it goes...Dig into it like a piece of chocolate cake. Eat it up and digest it. May it give you a love energy that will change the world, or at least yours...
The Way of Love
If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don’t love, I’m nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate.
If
I speak God’s Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making
everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain,
“Jump,” and it jumps, but I don’t love, I’m nothing.If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don’t love, I’ve gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I’m bankrupt without love.
Love never gives up.
Love cares more for others than for self.
Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have.
Love doesn’t strut,
Doesn’t have a swelled head,
Doesn’t force itself on others,
Isn’t always “me first,”
Doesn’t fly off the handle,
Doesn’t keep score of the sins of others,
Doesn’t revel when others grovel,
Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,
Puts up with anything,
Trusts God always,
Always looks for the best,
Never looks back,
But keeps going to the end.
Love cares more for others than for self.
Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have.
Love doesn’t strut,
Doesn’t have a swelled head,
Doesn’t force itself on others,
Isn’t always “me first,”
Doesn’t fly off the handle,
Doesn’t keep score of the sins of others,
Doesn’t revel when others grovel,
Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,
Puts up with anything,
Trusts God always,
Always looks for the best,
Never looks back,
But keeps going to the end.
Love
never dies. Inspired speech will be over some day; praying in tongues
will end; understanding will reach its limit. We know only a portion of
the truth, and what we say about God is always incomplete. But when the
Complete arrives, our incompletes will be canceled.
When
I was an infant at my mother’s breast, I gurgled and cooed like any
infant. When I grew up, I left those infant ways for good.We don’t yet see things clearly. We’re squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won’t be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We’ll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us!
But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation: Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love.
