Love. Who Gets it?

While I feel like I have so much to say, the more I read...the more I realize I have very little to add, and so much less I fully understand well enough to script my own love life, let alone an explanation of it on paper.

I'm reading The Four Loves by C.S. Lewis, and it makes my head and heart hurt. Who on earth can pen like this man? His thoughts are astoundingly challenging, and the way he writes is unparalleled. My reasons for reading Lewis are always to learn and to be challenged. I leave him very humbled and silent, yet still longing to process with my own fumbling words and hungry heart.

Recently my husband and I spoke at our college group about love, sex, and relationships. Quite a challenge to say the least - but truly our heartbeat for this generation. While preparing for this series, I learned one of the most powerful truths about love I have ever realized. I was deep in study - between John 14, 15, and I Corinthians 13, Genesis, Ruth, Galatians...I ran from Old Testament to the New Testament to hear from God on love. What I came away with was more than I had ever considered, and more than my heart was ready to bear.

Even though I have not finished hearing from C.S. Lewis on the matter, I am certain that what I have studied from him and other authors, at this point anyway, aligns with what God has spoken so beautifully - so subtly - and yet so very clearly to open hearts and minds.

The lesson is simply this: Love protects others from self.

I Corinthians 13 spins the reflection of self toward the image of God. For every way in which we could choose ourselves, there is a choice for others - which is ultimately the image of our God.

Love is patient. Love is kind. And so on... The opposite of any of these is a selfish course. Consider what you hate. You hate what opposes you, correct? How arrogant our hate, is it not? Hate is complete in its self direction.

Just consider the stance we take when we declare hate toward someone or something. YOU dare to oppose me?  Remember that heated argument with your spouse? Or better still, how about that moment when your child shouted "NO!" in your face. Remember that feeling that erupted in your gut? And how about the thoughts that raced through your mind? Isn't the root of all of that churning and burning simply SELF? Of course it is. True - there is righteous anger, but I doubt your memory drew for you such an image just now.

Like the pain of childbirth, so the course of love: self surrendered - in anguish - as we literally die to what we once were, so that someone else can live - in love. Romans 6 "Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him."

I'm trying so hard to understand this, and yet in my understanding I realize I really don't get love. God help us know you! Help us know love! "The unfolding of your word gives light. It gives understanding to the simple." Psalm 119:130

How amazing, then, that God should love the world! How much more vivid is His humility in coming to us as one of us! We are born opposed to God, and yet He loved us despite our defiance, and even GREATER still - He loves us in our defiance. What love!

 Love protects others from self. God so loved the world that He gave of Himself - His Son - for the Life of Spirit in Flesh, to protect us - from what we could never bear of Him - apart from Him..

"Abide in me, and I in you." John 15. Greater love has no one - than to lay down his life for his friends. Love does not consider self, but rather exists for the purpose of  life for others. The Triune God is love.

SELF-SEEKING. Baby, I was born THIS way: seeking self, and nurtured in a world of self seekers.

To Love is only of God, and to be able to love as God defines love is a gift of His Spirit. I Corinthians 13.Our Creator's image is a map embossed on our eternal souls, and His Son is the way to repair that image in our self driven flesh. Romans 3.

The road is narrow that leads to a love life, and few are those who find it. Matthew 7.

I'll end with a note from C.S. Lewis that still has me spinning in wonder. Join me, will you?

"Is it easy to love God?" asks an old author. "It is easy," he replies, "to those who do it." I have included two Graces under the word Charity. But God can give a third. He can awake in man, towards Himself, a super-natural Appreciative love. This is of all gifts the most to be desired. Here, not in our natural loves, nor even in ethics, lies the true centre of all human and angelic life. With this all things are possible. And with this, where a better book would begin, mine must end. I dare not proceed. God knows, not I, whether I have ever tasted this love. Perhaps I have only imagined the tasting. those like myself whose imagination far exceeds their obedience are subject to just penalty; we imagine conditions far higher than we have really reached. - The Four Loves -