What does it look like to love? It looks like Jesus. Period. He is Love, and as such is the perfect picture of it. And to model it, not only do I need grace in godly measure, I also must model Jesus in His life, even as He is in me — not only in the “spotlight” moments when He is interacting with someone, but (or rather) those where He is away in solitude and prayer with His Father, where He is fasting in the wilderness, where He is being baptized by His cousin. The sleepless nights where He poured His heart out to God, the reception He gave to the angels who attended to his hungry frame, His resistance — His persistent resistance — to the pressures and demands of the world’s kingdoms, its demands and rigors.
In short, to love is to follow Jesus in all of these things, the small, unannounced times of discipline and testing, as well as the grand on-the-spot moments of profound love and wisdom. I cannot expect to enjoy the latter if I do not maintain a consistent lifestyle in the former.
This all comes this week because of a friend of mine, and because by way of my broken-heartedness for him and even for the limited and fallible ways I have handled his heart and our relationship.
He’s a mess, this friend of mine. His life is defined in his struggle to run as fast as he can through his day, shoving through everyone in his path who slows him down, so that he does not have to stop and face the devastation he has left in the wake of his destructive living. To face reality for him would feel like his undoing — which ironically enough would be his undoing, yet the only true way to enter into something better. He would have to recognize the wounds he has inflicted upon those he wants to love, and he would have to recognize the wounds of his own soul inflicted by those who were supposed to love him, especially his family.
But instead of addressing the wounds, he has formed a life around them. It reminds me a bit of the Black Night in The Search for the Holy Grail. King Arthur chops his arms and legs off, yet he still hobbles around declaring victory against him instead of surrender. He is dismembered, bleeding, unable to walk — and certainly unable to love and protect those who have been entrusted to him — and yet he dismisses these as “mere flesh wounds.” My friend ends up wielding a sword that he is not equipped or well enough to handle, and as a result he slices and dices into the meat of his children, his wife, his family, his friends, and on and on. (More can be read of my friend here.)
The “In-Tension” of Love
I have tried to be faithful to what the Lord has spoken to my heart, and to act toward him in authentic love — love that calls him out to become the man he was born to be, while embracing in felt affection the man he sees each day in the mirror. But these two actions feel almost contradictory to each other. Paradoxes of love. I’ve heard that God “loves us where we are but loves us too much to keep us there.” How? I know that to be true, and yet to live in the tension of that love is to expose your heart to forces fierce enough to break it. If Jesus goes there, I want to as well, whatever the consequences, for this is true life. There is life to be found in following Him — even in this — and nowhere else. Like Thomas when Jesus announced He was going back to Judea (straight into the den of lions, so-to-speak) out of this love for His friend Lazarus, and chose to go with Jesus even if it meant his death (John 11:7-16), so I too choose to go with Him here in the Way of Love for my friend. (Jesus’ love of Lazarus was a similar kind of tension. Lazarus was dead, and Jesus came to him and wept for the loss. Yet He didn’t leave Lazarus there. His love for him brought him out of the tomb.)
So, where now, my King and Commander? Where now do we place our feet? In which direction are You walking? How — how, Jesus — How do I love [my friend] in this as You do? And how do I love him as You have called me to?
Be bigger than his sins and wounds. Be greater than all those who enable him and all who reject him. Be better than my failure to love him well — at least well enough to bring healing to him. Be his Savior, as You have been mine. In Your lovingkindness, deliver him from the shadow of death. Make him thirst ever more for You (Psalm 107) until he finds You through dry and desperate seeking!
And teach me to get out of Your way, that You may be his Counselor and Friend, even as You are his Redeemer and Suitor.
And come to my heart and bring me Your comfort. I put it to rest in You, broken, humbled, hurting, longing, and trusting. Ever hopeful in your boundless and endless love. Your wisdom. your grace. Your purposes. Master In the Ways of Living, teach me to live well in this.
Amen.
