Love Needed.

"Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, 

and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God"

(1 John 4:7)

I recently came across this quotation: "Everyone needs to be loved especially when they don't deserve it." At first glance it seems a graceful offering of wisdom, till I listen a bit more carefully to the oxymoron embedded in the text. It is this - the words "love" and "deserve" do not sit well together.

This reminds me of a story that I came across years ago about an impoverished family living in the Bronx, New York. A single-parent family, the mother worked long hours to provide food and shelter for her children. Though times were tough they managed to stay together, stay in school and, mostly, to stay out of trouble. The youngest though, was more deeply broken by their circumstances than his siblings, and tended to express his pain through rebellion and lashing out. Now, mother had skimped and saved a few dollars here and there over the years and had a small nest-egg put away in a tin to help send one of the children go to college. The youngest found the stash, stole it and spent it on a gun and drugs. He was arrested...

An older sister raged to their mother, "I hate him. I hate him for what he did, for what he has taken from us - your hard work, our dreams. I just hate him." With tears in her eyes, this life-worn, thread-bare mom responded to her daughter, "Don't hate him baby. it is when we are most difficult to love that we need to be loved the most. When we are completely lost we need love to come find us. Don't hate him, love him back to us."

“Love - not dim and blind but so far-seeing that it can glimpse around corners, around bends and twists and illusion; instead of overlooking faults, love sees through them to the secret inside.” 

(Vera Nazarian, Salt of the Air)

I've heard it often enough in our society - he/she deserves what they get. I've seen it in the Alberta redneck culture, if someone is an asshole they deserve to be treated like an asshole. And there seems to be a certain karmic logic to this. As Jesus said, we reap what we sow. Problem is, Love, is all about healing and renewal and life and laughter. That person that we write-off as useless, as "a waste of skin," is a gifted human being that has not realized their own worth. Living the Love that we are means, in part, that we search for, and draw out the Love that is within others, without regard to any sense of worthiness.

God's Love does not discriminate between the deserving, or the undeserving. God's Love, that immense, indescribable power that called the universe into existence, that holds the planets in their orbits, that causes sunshine to sparkle on ocean waves like the glimmer of a million diamonds, that Love that heals hearts, erupts as laughter in children, that delights in the soaring eagle, the playful dolphins, the joy of first-time parents - this immense Love surrounds and fills all that is, all the time. This awesome power that is God's Love seeks out and soaks into the most vilest offender with the same passion and yearning as it does the most enlightened saint.

"Then Peter began to speak: “I now realize how true it is that God does not show favoritism..."

(Acts 10.34)

There is a temptation to commodify love, to offer it to the most deserving, those easiest to love. What we would be giving then would not be God's Love, but rather a shallow and poor forgery that seeps from the wounded ego. This love impostor is powerless to make a positive change in our world, is impotent as a healing agent, and can in no way draw our hearts into the sacred heart of Christ. But Love, pure, flowing-from-the-heart-of-God Love, flowing from God through us, this Love - this makes a difference. 

Wherever you work today, wherever your path takes you, try this out:

- instead of giving what is "deserved," offer from your heart what is needed. In so doing you will be the Spirit's agent of healing, a part of the renewal of our world. 

I leave the last word to Paul:

"Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres."

(1 Corinthians 13)

Grateful for Love

Pastor Bill

Close your eyes

and breathe

out

let

breath

fill you

as you

breathe in

let

love

fill you

Love

is

who

you

are

[First published December 5, 2012]

It's Always Darkest

Darkness and light

day and night

ebony black

brilliant white

'tween blindness and sight

a thread drawn tight

dawn is the land

from which we take flight

Thank you to fellow sojourner Joy LeBlanc for inspiring my thoughts for today's writing. 

There is darkness within; darkness that is sometimes frightening and overwhelming. It almost seems foreign to us, except that it is so terribly familiar. At times we fear it, resent it, run from it. Then there are moments when we submit to it, dive into it, relish it, only to walk into the light and feel shame for the darkness which seems so far away and untrue.

There is light within; light that is sometimes frightening and overwhelming. It almost seems foreign to us, except that it is so terribly familiar. At times we long for it, hope for it, yearn for it. Then there are moments when we submit to it, dive into it, relish it, only to walk into the night and feel a foreigner in a foreign land. 

We are, we humans, creatures of dark and light, day and night. But perhaps - perhaps we are truly creatures of the dawn - of almost day and almost night.

Dawn - a time of promise, the herald of day, the complete unfolding of night from its evening birthing.

Is this not the path of our being - dawn follows the darkness which is birthed from the dusk which overtook the brilliance of day, which is the love child of the dawn sky? Cycles and circles and beginnings and endings.

There is darkness within - and I would be incomplete without it in this very human journey. Without this darkness I would not learn compassion; I would not know the sweet ringing of hope's bell tolling when night seems endless. Without this darkness I would be a pond where the love of my heart wants to be an ocean. Without this darkness I would be height and width but lacking depth; two dimensions in a three-dimensional universe.

To speak of the Light is to know its twin, and to embrace one is to dance with the other. I for one am a creature of the dawn, full of promise, an explorer between two worlds.

"darkness was over the surface of the deep and the Spirit of God hovered over the waters...

and God said, 'let there be light...'"

(Genesis 1)

and there was dawn of the first day of creation.

Darkness and light

One day there will be only light,

and I will have learned of its glory from the shadows of night's long embrace,

and I will forever breathe in gratitude that the journey of my soul in this flesh

walked the dawn and dusk

in our Creator's wake.

If you have known the darkness you have my compassion.

Accept the darkness; dance in the light

Pax,

Pastor Bill

[First published November 28, 2012.]