Today I woke up with a question in my head: What is love? I have read so much about love, I have heard so much about it and I have written about it myself, but I am still not sure what it is.
I have heard people talk about love as it is something we just decide to do. That has never worked in my life. People tell me that God is love; it isn’t something He has, it is something is. Well, I am truly happy He is love, but what does that mean? Then we have all those who say that love is the opposite of self-centeredness. They compare and contrast self-love and self-giving love. I can understand the difference between those two concepts, but they are still just academic notions to me.
Can love be understood, even far better, be experienced through words? Aren’t words just a limited means of communication? Can they precisely convey something which is beyond words? If that is the case, why I am writing this? Then we have all those who assert that love is displayed through actions. I believe they have a point. However, I find it tremendously difficult to plan that today I am going to be very loving and caring, because I have tried that approach. I don’t think my efforts convinced anyone, least of all myself.
Love is often used as a word to express expectations very few of us can meet. It has its cultural connotations which sometimes make the whole idea of being a loving person a terrible yoke. It is a word that has caused more condemnation that any other word. Every day there are souls rededicating themselves to God promising to become a better husband, father, mother or whatever. People cry everyday to God pleading Him to make them more loving. Their cry is often echoing their notions of love which not necessarily is God’s idea of love.
Those who have received the revelation that Christ is a living reality inside them and knows that He is everything they need might have this sensation of a slight disappointment. As Eva we might fall for the temptation thinking: “Is this all?” We can hear the accuser roar: “Has God really said that He is living in you as you? If that is the truth why do you have so little love? It is your responsibility to increase your love! ” However, the devil isn’t love so he really has no idea of what he is talking about. He only knows a perverted version of what God calls love. The devils idea of love is that it is something the creation has and not something God is.
Earlier today I had an experience which ripped my heart open and for a brief second exposed all of its pain and cravings. Then there came a sensation of balm being applied and something very soothing covering the wounds. Everything was completely spontaneous. I didn’t know it was coming and I didn’t make it happen. Something deep down in me exclaimed: “This is love.”
If this is so then my entire comprehension of love is in for a makeover. There is no doubt in my mind that this was a presence larger than me touching me with a gentleness I cannot express with words. Didn’t God do the same thing at the cross? Ripped His heart open for all to see? Is there a pain, a craving in His heart for love, companionship and relationship with His creation? Is love a mixture of exposing and healing? Is pain and suffering a prerequisite for love? Is need love in disguise? What is then love when everything is restored?
If His love is spontaneous, why must my love then be anything else? If He is living inside me then I can rest in the fact that His spontaneous love will surface in a tangible way when a situation or an encounter calls for love, can’t I? It’s beyond my conscious control. I can just enjoy and relish in the moment beholding Him making himself manifest through human flesh knowing that He just touched another human being through me. And the most incredible thing; I experienced the whole thing with my entire being. I did it, yet not I, He did it. This sets me completely free from boasting, this sets me completely free from achieving, from rededicating, from planning and it sets me completely free from being an example, that is, a “good” Christian. I assume love boils down to that I Am! And, hopefully this will allow me to just let others be.
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