Learning love...

 

Oh yes, I have love. I find it very easy to love snuggly little brown babies who look up at me with twinkly eyes and give a huge smile. I have friends and family that I love, and I enjoy talking with them and sharing memories and investing in their lives. Even strangers I can love, when I look at them with God’s eyes and see not just a dirty little beggar on the side of the street, for instance, but a precious creation of the Almighty Father who is desperate to find his way home.  

I know what love is.

And yet, God has used this time in Haiti to show me how much I don’t know about love, how much He still needs to teach me and mold me into His image. He’s shown me this in the middle of the night, when I stumble out of bed for that same smiley brown baby, who is now wiggling around and screaming because I didn’t get her bottle ready fast enough, and I find myself frustrated. He’s shown me in the afternoon, when I would rather have some rest during the babies’ naps than spend time with some other little needy one. He’s shown me in my reaction to a friend’s suggestion that we help take care of little Daniel, the little Daniel I love and have longed to help, thinking it would be too much work with the babies we already have. He has shown me how little I know of love when I realize that I care more about being the one to love a little one than about that little one getting the love they need. It’s pathetic.

But it is not just my lack that God has been showing me. I am seeing something more, and it’s beautiful. I’m seeing a love that is not tainted by selfishness and not limited by fear. I’m seeing a joy that comes from complete abandon to the One who Himself is love; complete freedom to let Him move in me and do what He delights in, do what love does in a person, through a person. I do not have the fullness of that love yet, but I want it. I’ve seen glimpses of it, too, here in Haiti. And since the Fullness of Love is my Lord, then I know that His love is accessible to me. Oh, Jesus, let it come!

I was thinking this afternoon about how love and self-protection are so opposite; how whenever I operate in the fleshly pattern of taking care of self first, love is squashed and hindered. And then I remembered 1 John 4, and I drew a sharp breath in excitement. Perfect love casts out fear… (1 John 4:18) I had never before thought of that including the silly “little” fear of discomfort, pain, or loss; but I see it now. Self-protection really is fear; fear that God won’t take care of me well enough, that I have to guard myself against giving too much, trusting too much… whatever it is. And “there is no fear in love.” No; “the one who fears is not made perfect in love.” It all makes sense. I cannot abide in fear and in love—in God—at the same time, because they are opposites.

I have so much to learn, but I'm excited. The more we know Him, the more we know love. Oh, may we never stop or grow weary in this pursuit!

 

"... that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the

breadth and length and height and depth,

and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge,

that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God.

Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us, to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen.

Ephesians 3:17-21

 

Sweet Gerda and her little friends