Love

I’ve had love on my mind lately.  I recently reread the (amazing) book Redeeming Love, by Francine Rivers.  It is a retelling of the story of Hosea, set in California gold rush days.  I’ve read this book many times, but this time more than others I was struck with a deep longing to know God’s love as it is portrayed in this book: passionate, pursuing, always patient.  The longing was sometimes so great I would just put the book down and weep.  Every fiber of my being cries out for a love that could fill me up, that could take my heart of stone and turn into a heart of flesh.  While I know in my head about such love, it is hard to grasp it when you can’t see or feel it.  Dominated by my emotions, it is easy for me to make decisions about whether God loves me and how much by how I am feeling at any given moment.  

A movie I watched recently had a similar effect on me.  It was Moulin Rouge (you can laugh at me if you want).  There is a phrase repeated several times in the movie and it stuck with me afterwards: “The greatest thing you’ll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.”  The movie lifts up love as the ultimate good, and it touches on something, doesn’t it?  Only it’s focused on the wrong source for that love.  I’m starting to believe that the best thing I can learn in life is to just love God, and allow Him to love me in return.  Everything else flows from that.  It will result in learning to love the people around me without expecting anything in return, and being able to receive their love without placing my identity in it.  

“And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.” Ephesians 3:17-19.