My New Year started with a bang, well at least my interpretation of one. I woke up and spent my morning with coffee and my love, Jesus. Oh yes Sunday mornings are practically designed for coffee and Jesus, throw in a rainy day and some books and it’s practically perfect in every way.
I’ve learned a lot about love in 2016, so 2017 I hope you are ready to be submerged in it.
Let me tell you a little about it.
You see in the past year I learned about a love so magnificent that it changed everything. It changed how I loved.
In this past year I fell in love with Jesus and in turn He revealed to me the way He loves. It's a love that changes everything.
You see I had the opportunity to love others in this past year, and I loved them but it was in the world’s way not with a love like Jesus.
I loved with boundaries, categories, and conditions. If I felt hurt, or that my love wasn’t returned I’d withdraw it. Doesn’t everyone? If a boy lies to you, a girl breaks your heart, a friend turns away from you, a family member hurts you; we withdraw our love. “You didn’t love me in the same way, you didn’t love me enough, so I’ll leave. Never to return”
A love with boundaries, categories, and conditions; is that truly love? In it’s purest form? Oh no, it’s far from it, this is what has been revealed to me.
If Jesus loved like us, with all these restrictions, if He turned away or withdrew His love when we didn’t love him back when we didn’t love him in the same way then wouldn’t everything we believe in unravel?
Our faith’s foundation is love, a pure love, a love without boundaries, categories or conditions. It is just that, love. It is unconditional, relentless, steadfast, patient, forgiving. Isn’t that the kind of love we want to receive? The love we read about in fairytales and see in the movies. This is the captivating and wonderful love that only leaves Joy. God loves us in this way, in a way where the boundaries of a friend, boyfriend, girlfriend, husband, wife, mother, daughter, father, son, sister, brother, teacher, student are all destroyed; where the only thing that remains is just love.
This love, a love like Jesus, could move mountains. Imagine how much brighter the world would be if we focused on loving others without conditions or categories; we focused on loving them with a true love. Not one that disappears when a friend falls short of being a friend, when blood is not thicker than water, when a partner forgets how to romance. If we loved like Jesus, if it just flowed through our relationships and consumed those around us without hitting the boundaries we create, then it has the power to change even the hardest of hearts.
So 2017 this is my promise to you, and to the years I meet after you, to love like Jesus. To love without boundaries, to love relentlessly and patiently just like the one who IS love, loves.
Because if we love others like Jesus, who IS love, then aren’t we showing them the most amazing picture the world has ever known?
We are showing them Him.
