Friday, October 8, 2010

Love is...

It's difficult to put into words the range of emotions I feel this morning.

My baby girl will be married tomorrow. Her rehersal is tonight. But yesterday, the pastor doing the service, Tim Smith, called to tell me his sister, five years older than him but a young woman, was dying and he might be called out of town. He and I talked possibilities for his replacement and God blessed us with one of my friends, a man with long ties to my ministry. The Rev. Woody Hingle will step in.

Somehow this all shows just how difficult and challenging life can be. On the one hand, the wedding will go on and that moment of sweet bliss for the couple will prevail. On the other hand, a good man, a pastor who took care of his business before going out of town when the normal thing to do would have been to simply get in the car and go, loses a loved one. How touching and memorable. How seemingly cruel and ironic.

Anyone who sees only good things, who never looks at life as the roller-coaster it truly is, is mistaken. Life is lived in ups and downs, craters and mounds, valleys of death and mountains of transfiguration.

God knows what we go through. He truly does. He loves us enough to allow us to love. And when we love, when we stick our necks out, we have incredible successes and occasionally we have immeasurable hurts.

Listen, please listen, "Under the apple tree I work you, in the place where you were born. Close your heart to every love but mine; hold no one in your arms but me. Love is as powerful as death, passion is as strong as death itself. It bursts into flame and burns like a raging fire. Water can not put it out; no flood can drown it; but if any tried to buy love with their wealth, contempt is all they would get."(Song of Songs, Chapter 8).

Love is as powerful as death, the scriptures say. Imagine that. The moment that ends all moments is no more powerful than the moment that rewards our longing.

Love is so many, many things that despite having an endless pallet to write on, I can't say all the things that love is.

Paul tried. This is his description of love,
"Love never gives up.
Love cares more for others than for self.
Love doesn't want what it doesn't have.
Love doesn't strut,
Doesn't have a swelled head,
Doesn't force itself on others,
Isn't always "me first,"
Doesn't fly off the handle,
Doesn't keep score of the sins of others,
Doesn't revel when others grovel,
Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,
Puts up with anything,
Trusts God always,
Always looks for the best,
Never looks back,
But keeps going to the end.
Love never dies."

That's so wonderful, isn't it? But the truth there is also profound. We lose loved ones but the love in that relationship -- in the form of memories so real they play like an HD TV -- never dies. We remember those moments, those incredibly special moments where control goes out the window and love crawls in to fill the unplanned gaps.

In our mad rush to have rules to follow in our lives, we fail to understand that at the essence of Christianity, there is love. Scripture, when given the chance to describe God as all powerful or all knowing or all controlling, instead describes Him or Her as "love." In 1 John, we read, "And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him."

In fact, the relationship between Jesus and his church, his followers, is described as bridegroom to bride in the book of Revelation: "For the wedding of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready."

The love of a young couple is cemented into pledge. The love of a family torn by death is remembered.

Life is lived; death comes.

That's Life, isn't it?

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