The Interminable Calling to Love

            Love is an awfully big word for four letters. The implications held within it are staggering, and in the minds of poets and authors it conjures images of Paris and Helen of Troy, of Antony and Cleopatra, this divine force that could splinter nations and command armadas. Many realists would dispel this as an illusory myth to warm the hearts of romantics and yet in their reductionist view, they limit the scope of love to the home, and even poets and authors limit love to romance. Yet Christ would have us know it in its full extent as we read: “If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing” (1 Corinthians 13:3). Love is the center of it all.

            At training camp in Georgia, I had felt called to growth in understanding and in practice of what love is, and in these past few days, it is love that He has been speaking into my life. Love is a unique thing, and indeed, it is elevated above faith and hope (1 Cor. 13:13) for faith is of past works and deeds, hope is in the time to come, but love is present and eternal. In the life we look forward to, we will not need faith for He will be manifest among us, we need not hope in His promises for they have all been fulfilled, but love will still reign. For it is in love, that the Son was made incarnate to live among us, and it was in love that He went to the cross, bequeathing His inheritance upon us while He bore the propitiation for our misdeeds. Already, it is an amazing revelation that love is eternal, but furthermore, that to do so is our highest calling. On this topic, Dan Allender said:

“Our deepest loyalty must be to be formed in the image of Christ, to become the person we are deeply created to be. This exceeds the legitimate desire for happiness. It must prevail against every inclination to seek safety, in the absence of pain or false comfort. It must be a priority over golf, a glass of wine, or finishing a business project. It is our highest calling to love like Christ.”

            Those same poets and romantics, and even the realists, will say that love is ultimately something that ultimately brings joy and is mostly intended to this effect. We see this especially in modern secular marriages, as so called ‘Me-marriages’ become increasingly common and as marriage becomes an engine to produce happiness for the self and not the other. Love is so much bigger than that, it is so much bigger than happiness, than joy, than me.

“We love because He first loved us”

1 John 4:19

            The love I know, the love that my parents dote upon me, that I can sacrificially give to my community, the love I see in so many people with nothing, as they hurry to provide food for us for simply visiting them, it can come from no other place but God. This is a love that desires not for itself but desires and hopes and bleeds for the other (1 Corinthians 13). It is greater than sending a thousand ships in somebodies name because God, in all His infinite love, has delivered His children from enslavement, from exile, from sin, from death! He has steadfastly loved us as we have stumbled around in hedonism and decadence for over thousands of years. In spite of our continued adultery, He sacrificed Himself and shared His inheritance. Is there no higher calling than to love like this? Is there nothing more powerful that has shaken or destroyed more nations? This is the love that has overcome the world (John 16:33).

            I do not know how many walks of faith are defined by simply turning ‘I know’ into ‘I am,’ but I know that it is has certainly been my walk. I know that this is His love, and that I ought to love for no selfish gain but purely in sacrifice. Slowly, step by step I am. Step by step, I listen and do and move closer and closer to the end of the line that He and all others would be before me (John 3:30; Matthew 20:16). More and more, every day, He breaks my heart as I lean away from love of myself and independence, and into love for others and needing them. Yet as He rips those lies asunder, I am mired with an odd mix of joy at the presence of community and dolor at the absence of it for others. Most especially in the present, I am torn because He has spoken to me about those who have been told that they are not needed, that their need is so much that they would be cast out from society. Individuals who have been told that they are too old, too broken, too much of an inconvenience. We need them. I need them. There are no words to describe the blessing they are, and not simply in the opportunity to serve, but to hear their stories, to witness the strength He has blessed them with in the face of overwhelming opposition.

            One such person in my life, who I’m sure feels as though they are Job incarnate with the hand that they have been dealt. They have been a fierce defender in my life, a reminder of Christ’s joy as I smile or roll my eyes in conversations with them, a rock of comfort and warmth in my life. They have been beaten down and when it is genuinely one painful event after the next, with nary a break in between, it is hard to be there for all of that. It isn’t always convenient; in fact, it rarely is. But I need them, I want them in my life. They are a defining blessing of my life. Love, His love that fills us, is the only thing that overcomes all the muck and mire to persist in being there and encouraging them, especially as they continually do the same for me. The truth that the Father speaks into this, is that “love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things” (1 Corinthians 13:13).

            As I am poured into by the amazing people the He has surrounded me with, I want to pour out love. I want to pour out His love that He has filled me with, and may every breath He gives to me, I pray it’s His glory that they see (Morgan Harper Nichols). Looking forward to this next week I just ask that y’all pray for continued guidance and truth from the Lord as I walk in this change for radical obedience. I ask that y’all would also pray for my team and the communities in Peten that we’re serving as we near the end of our time here! I have grown to love these kids so much and I didn’t expect that it would hurt to leave as much as I know it will (said every missionary ever). Pray for the Lord to continue His work here and that we would be find rest as we prepare to serve a brand-new community in Romania next month! Till then, love y’all!