I have had on my mind recently the notion of loving as God loves. A very big concept huh? To love as God loves. To sacrificially and unconditionally love those around me. I am only human, so I will probably never get this right, but it has been deep in my heart lately to at least try.
Sometimes as the loved one of somebody, you have to put up with a lot. You become the sounding board sometimes, for all things negative going on in their life. Or maybe you are simply not always treated as respectfully as you wish you would be, due to the nature of your relationship with that person. I don't think we, as Christians, are called to only unconditionally and sacrificially love those who have the capacity to do it back. I think we are simply just called to do it. Regardless.
When I think about unconditional love I think about a child. Children throw fits, and temper tantrums, when their BIG HUGE emotions are just too BIG and too HUGE for their little bodies to handle. And it manipulates their behavior in specific ways. When their issue manifests into a fit, who do they typically direct their rage at? Their parents. Why? Because deep inside of us somewhere, we believe the lie that it is "ok" to treat the people who love us the most, the worst. Because they love us no matter what, and will be there before the fit starts, during the fit, and after the fit is over. The practice of loving unconditionally then becomes a discipline that is too much to take on by ourselves. It requires the transforming power of the Holy Spirit, or else it will never genuinely happen.
When I think about sacrificial love I think about those dramatic movies and tv shows where person A takes a bullet or something for person B by pushing them out of the way last second, and jumping in front of the gun themselves...then you see "to be continued" and you find out next season whether person A lives or not. ( I watch a lot of Grey's Anatomy by the way haha) Honestly though, sacrificial love can show up in the SMALLEST of ways in our day to day relationships with people. Specifically if you are married to someone, I would think one way to sacrificially love them daily would be to wake up every morning asking the question "what can I do for you today, what do you need out of me today in order to make this relationship function as best it can?" It seems easy enough, yet it's a question that does not get asked near enough. Or maybe for relationships of love such as family or friendships, we "take the bullet"--we remain quiet to avoid conflict, we never defend ourselves to remain classy, we let defensive or hurtful remarks slip through the cracks, we simply do what we have to do in order to remain in peace and harmony within the relationship. And it isn't one sided, there should be times when both parties in the relationship are doing this, it's just the natural ebb and flow of it all.
We are called to love others, the way God loves us. It's hard isn't it? It's hard to offer grace when it's easier to offer judgement. It's hard to remain faithful when we are being cheated out of something ourselves. It's hard to stay, when the other person's treatment of us makes us want to run. But just like a parent with their child, it is so important to try. To stay. To remain faithful. To be there. To LOVE. Because if we, as Christians, aren't showing God's love to others then who in the heck do we suppose is going to?
I think of the book Redeeming Love by Francine Rivers, based off of the book of Hosea in the Word of God. God shows His love to His people in that story by using a faithful man of God to continuously pursue the heart of a prostitute who keeps running away from him. We do this as children of God, CONSTANTLY. We kick, and scream, throw fits, and after it all, He is faithfully still there and still loving us, as well as chasing us and pursuing our hearts. If we can remember this kind of love, when putting our own love for others under the microscope, I think we can better see how to handle situations and in turn, better know how to LOVE.
From the humble and probably useless ramblings of Me :)
