"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.
"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]
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