Well another love post. I know just all about the love this month. I think with everything going on in our world and the unrest and the political.issues, the pandemic and just being pushed to the limits, love feels like a topic that feels like the right thing right now. I have had alot of thoughts this week and my past blogs this week have been about the love of a couple, the love of oneself and this felt like the next thing I should write about. Agape love. The most perfect of love, unselfish, untarnished, pure form of love. There is storge’ love– familial love; Eros love– the romantic love; phili a’ love –which is a friendly love, brotherly love, and agape love, unselfish God inspired love.
We as humans make love so complicated if you think about it. But when you think about it, we humans are complex beings. We were created in His image, His design. We start from the tiniest of cells and those cells divide and cling and grow to form us into the people we are today. Flesh and bones, tendons and ligaments. Heart beats that start beating at 6 weeks gestation and beat until one day no more. A body that grows and changes and emotions galore and a soul that is our essence. Think about when you see a baby, be it your own or someone else’s, you melt, you talk in a different voice. You inhale that sweet baby smell and stare in wonder at this tiny person. Now imagine God looking at you, smiling at His creation and the perfect love, His agape love flowing down from Him. A love that isn’t given for any self serving need or selfish motives, but a pure love, an all encompassing love. Wow just soak that up for a minute. Let that feeling wash over you. Think about His love and how His love sent His only Son for us. That is agape love, that is hard to wrap your mind around.
So many stages and degrees of love. Each one has there place in our lives and no two loves are the same. The love of a child and family is different from the love of a spouse or partner to the love of friends. All are different and have different levels, but they are all love. Love is used as compliment at times…I love that purse or love your hair cut. It is used to express emotion and sorrow. It is really a verb that we sometimes forget to put into action. Love is a feeling. A life without love is a life with sorrow. Love requires self sacrifice, honesty and care, trust and safety. We live in a world where sometimes we forget how to love. Then you go back to Agape love and realize how amazing that love is. No matter your flaws and failures or all the other things you think are not right, this pure love steps in like a ray of sunshine warming your very core. That He gives this love to each person without any reason other than He can. The love we show to Him is agape love, loving Him without selfish motives or making wishes like a genie in a bottle. It is a pure love, the purest. Sometimes it can be the least talked about. We love our families and friends, we have that intense burning kind of love for our partners/spouses, but sometimes these loves can be intermittent, contentient on someone else and how they respond, it can be fleeting sometimes or easily replaced. Agape love is given without any strings. Think about this, God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son so that we would not perish but have everlasting life. Jesus, without sin, suffered through mockery and crucification and became the ultimate sacrifice for each of us. Now if you ever needed to really look at this Agape love, this is it. Could you imagine watching your son whipped and crucified, that familial love, that brotherly love watching this? I can’t imagine being His earthly mom watching the baby she bore and held and His heavenly Father watching His son and waiting for Him with open arms, His son and His servant? Agape love bears all things, protecting others. How this sacrifice bore the nails and gave protection for our eternity is beyond comprehension. They felt you and I were worth it, that we are loved with this ultimate love.
I know that I fail Him, usually on a daily basis either through thought, words or deeds. I am not proud of that, but I am humble enough to admit it. I am not the strongest of biblical scholars, but I know what He lays on my heart. I know that I believe. I know that I can’t wrap my mind around this level of love but I know there are moments that I have felt that love. I have wanted the other types of love and have been lucky to have experienced them all. The desire for an eros type of love run deeps and hope is always there that I will experience it again. The love of my family and friends is something I never take for granted. The love of Jesus has touched my life and one I want to pursue even more. When I can’t love myself, when the sandpaper people in my life make me lose sight of who I am supposed to be and how I respond, when life throws one curve ball after another, He loves me and shows me how I should love. Think about that simple childhood song, Jesus loves me. Yes Jesus loves me for the bible tells me so. The bible speaks of His love. Gives us a map of familial love through the old testament with families and tribes and life before Grace. The Song of Solomon gives us the guidelines and an image of Eros love. The love chapter in Corinthians gives us the outline of love….Love is patient, love is kind, it doesn’t envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it isn’t self-seeking, it does not anger. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. The chapter continues and ends in this….And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. Love conquers all, in most every form. We should cling to our faith, never lose hope, but always show love to the best of our ability. We all show love differently, by words, actions and deeds. But words need action to accompany them, love is a verb an action, the deeds we do should be done in love.
My Dad was a man that didn’t just throw the love word around. It didn’t mean that he didn’t love me, he just didn’t say it alot. My Dad made the word love an action and deed. My Dad showed his love, not wanting credit or be bragged on, not for accolades, but that was how he showed his love. Growing up I couldn’t see that. Looking back now through different views and even more so now that he has passed on, I see how he loved me. He worked two jobs so mom could stay home with us girls, he provided financially and showed his love. He loved mom and showed us the love a spouse should have. He provided for us, he was a protector. I never once was afraid because my Dad had us covered. He showed us how to enjoy life and the simple joys he had taught us it wasn’t just about materialistic things. He showed a different level of love to my kids. Seeing him with my kids was a glimpse of what he was like before we became the terrible teenagers. Watching him with his siblings and mother, his extended family and friends, you saw his commitment and his love for them. As a grown woman whose marriage ended, he was there to step in as a male influence for my kids. He knew how to fix things, he was a handy man, a talker, never met a stranger kind of man. So we may not have had a relationship like some father and daughters do, but we loved each other. He loved me even though he couldn’t always say it. He showed me he loved me in other ways. And yes, there were times I so wanted to hear those words instead of words of discipline and “life lessons” but to have those life lessons and hear his voice today and see his arched eyebrows that still made me feel like a little girl in trouble would be amazing. It makes me think back to about a month or so after he died. For some reason a breaker tripped and cut off electricity upstairs. I went to the garage half asleep– it was 1:30 AM and my son woke me out of a dead sleep–and I stood there eyes half open thinking all the breakers looked on and my first thought was ‘I need to call dad and see what to do’ and then it dawned on me I couldn’t and I stood in the garage crying. Then I said to myself he would say ‘ No reason to cry now’ and I talked to both of my Dad’s and got myself together and looked at the breaker box again and saw the one that was tripped that I missed the first time. So both of them in heaven but still in my heart and still guiding me. So when I think about it, I can’t always hear God say He loves me, but he shows me. He shows me by detouring people not meant to be in my life, He shows me by letting me open my eyes everyday and the moments in life where you know He has gone before me, walks beside me and carries me when I can’t go anymore. His word tells me He loves me. So the words may not have always be audible from my earthly Dad and my heavenly Dad, but they are there in so many ways each and everyday.
This blog entry is about demonstrating and discussing love. If you find the content against what you believe, well I am sorry for that and happy to discuss it. If you don’t know Jesus, well let’s talk about it. If you find this offensive, well bless your heart and I am still called to love you and show you the love I have been blessed with. Our world has become a world of easily offended, a world afraid to discuss Jesus, a world that thinks they are beyond a simple faith. We can’t always depend on ourselves because ourselves were put here for His reason and in His timing. If you have never been loved, had a hard family life or tragedies beyond comprehension and feel that you can’t be vulnerable enough to open yourself to love, well please reach out to someone. A counselor or clergy or a friend, heal the hurts in your life and learn from them don’t wear them as a badge of honor to isolate yourself more but to open your life more to receive love. Reach out and then reach up. Us earthly people will let you down, we let ourselves down. Feelings and emotions get all mixed in to this love thing, some use abuse in the guise of love, some just can’t let themselves love. Those are the ones that need more love, examples of love. Some are so walled off to love they can’t let themselves be hurt so they don’t take a chance. So for all the ways we abuse love, there is still a love like no other that engulfs us if we just are open to receive it. That agape love. We each give and receive love differently, some over love and some under love, some with hold love as a punishment, some execute authority in the guise of love. Some just want to be loved for who they are and let their love overflow for someone else. Some love their children beyond measure and some don’t realize the blessings they have in their children. Earthly love is complex and complicated, human nature and actions add to the chaos of love. You are worthy of all these loves, you are wonderfully made to open your hearts to love, your arms to hold those you love, your mind to process this love, you were made from love and we are called to love. This Agape love, well it is a love given freely, unselfish, without motive and it will be received in the same manner. When you feel you are unlovable, say that simple verse from Jesus loves me, yes He loves me for the Bible tells me so. Show love, receive love, love never fails.