On love

I've been doing a lot of thinking on love lately, and I'm starting to wonder if many of us have had it all wrong. I realized something important about a year and a half ago, and its only now that I have been tried and refined that I have finally found words for what I discovered back then: human beings really can't make one another very happy for long.

Let me explain: if we are to take love, or the object of our love (let's say a woman), as an end in itself, it is quite easy to fall into an obsessive, but quite natural, zeal for her. I think there is a part of this love that is very instinctive if we look at the bonds that are formed between lovers, friends, and families...but we can't allow love to end here. There is danger in allowing love, or its object, to exist as an end in itself because it goes bad when it is set up on its own. I think the most dangerous part about love is that there is something in it which makes it easy just to stop at the natural level and mistake it for something heavenly and eternal. Essentially it becomes a false god. I think it is somewhat easier to give up our base desires and appetites (like lust) to God because it's easier to recognize our need for salvation and redemption there. I think it's much harder to see when we've taken love as an end in itself and wronged God and others in doing so. There is only one Good in this world, and that is God. Everything else is good when it looks to Him and bad when it turns from Him. Not to say that love is holy or unholy in itself, but it becomes holy when God's hands are on the reins.

I think that God wants to take this instinctive, natural love and turn it into something better. We exist as fathers, mothers, siblings, children, and lovers only because we exist first as God's creation. That relationship is older and closer. God loves us deeply. God has suffered for us. God has waited a long time for us. He wants us to love each other as He understands love. I don't mean to say that I think loving other people is a means to an end, because each person we come across in our lives certainly has their own permanence, importance, and intrinsic value...it's just that we are not meant to stop and spend eternity there. We are meant to press on, journey further, and find God.

So where do we begin? For me, the only remedy to this "cheapened" sense of love was to take it away. It's only when this first sense of "love" lets us down that, in the loneliness and the silence, something else much grander has the chance to grow. I learned then and there to want God for His own sake. I began small...learning to want God besides friends, family, and a wife. God planted a small flame of desire for Him to start this process in me. It was later that I learned to want God more than these things. I learned all along that I had been wrong, and that there was no need to go on pretending as if I were right! My friends, my family, and this "perfect woman" that I had always dreamed of weren't mine...they were never meant to be. They are God's, and they always have been. However, at this point, paradoxically, God HAS given them to me in a sense as blessings, as an inheritance in His Family, in trust. I still am having trouble putting words to this event and this feeling...but it was only when I gave everything up that I truly received it for the first time. Maybe this is what the Bible is talking about when it says that you must "hate" your life before you can gain it. We give up our natural love of others as an end and learn to love God in its stead, only to receive love to give fully in the eternal sense. I've begun to truly live and truly love and I believe entirely that you cannot love another creature fully and rightly until you love God.

When Mallory and I were talking this morning, she touched on something important which got me thinking about writing this: she said that if I died, her life, her heart, and her ability to love others wouldn't be ruined because her love does not end with me...it ends with God. We both love God more than we love each other, and as such, we are learning to love each other fully. It took different events in our lives to pull us outside of ourselves, outside this natural sense of love, to draw us to the Lord so that He could reveal love to us in the eternal sense. But in losing ourselves to Him, I think we can both agree that we have received one thousand-fold what we gave up. To God be the glory, forever. I've been doing a lot of thinking on love lately, and I'm starting to wonder if many of us have had it all wrong. I realized something important about a year and a half ago, and its only now that I have been tried and refined that I have finally found words for what I discovered back then: human beings really can't make one another very happy for long.

Let me explain: if we are to take love, or the object of our love (let's say a woman), as an end in itself, it is quite easy to fall into an obsessive, but quite natural, zeal for her. I think there is a part of this love that is very instinctive if we look at the bonds that are formed between lovers, friends, and families...but we can't allow love to end here. There is danger in allowing love, or its object, to exist as an end in itself because it goes bad when it is set up on its own. I think the most dangerous part about love is that there is something in it which makes it easy just to stop at the natural level and mistake it for something heavenly and eternal. Essentially it becomes a false god. I think it is somewhat easier to give up our base desires and appetites (like lust) to God because it's easier to recognize our need for salvation and redemption there. I think it's much harder to see when we've taken love as an end in itself and wronged God and others in doing so. There is only one Good in this world, and that is God. Everything else is good when it looks to Him and bad when it turns from Him. Not to say that love is holy or unholy in itself, but it becomes holy when God's hands are on the reins.

I think that God wants to take this instinctive, natural love and turn it into something better. We exist as fathers, mothers, siblings, children, and lovers only because we exist first as God's creation. That relationship is older and closer. God loves us deeply. God has suffered for us. God has waited a long time for us. He wants us to love each other as He understands love. I don't mean to say that I think loving other people is a means to an end, because each person we come across in our lives certainly has their own permanence, importance, and intrinsic value...it's just that we are not meant to stop and spend eternity there. We are meant to press on, journey further, and find God.

So where do we begin? For me, the only remedy to this "cheapened" sense of love was to take it away. It's only when this first sense of "love" lets us down that, in the loneliness and the silence, something else much grander has the chance to grow. I learned then and there to want God for His own sake. I began small...learning to want God besides friends, family, and a wife. God planted a small flame of desire for Him to start this process in me. It was later that I learned to want God more than these things. I learned all along that I had been wrong, and that there was no need to go on pretending as if I were right! My friends, my family, and this "perfect woman" that I had always dreamed of weren't mine...they were never meant to be. They are God's, and they always have been. However, at this point, paradoxically, God HAS given them to me in a sense as blessings, as an inheritance in His Family, in trust. I still am having trouble putting words to this event and this feeling...but it was only when I gave everything up that I truly received it for the first time. Maybe this is what the Bible is talking about when it says that you must "hate" your life before you can gain it. We give up our natural love of others as an end and learn to love God in its stead, only to receive love to give fully in the eternal sense. I've begun to truly live and truly love and I believe entirely that you cannot love another creature fully and rightly until you love God.

When Mallory and I were talking this morning, she touched on something important which got me thinking about writing this: she said that if I died, her life, her heart, and her ability to love others wouldn't be ruined because her love does not end with me...it ends with God. We both love God more than we love each other, and as such, we are learning to love each other fully. It took different events in our lives to pull us outside of ourselves, outside this natural sense of love, to draw us to the Lord so that He could reveal love to us in the eternal sense. But in losing ourselves to Him, I think we can both agree that we have received one thousand-fold what we gave up. To God be the glory, forever.

pistol

a boyish love song. :-)



I love how you curse when I wake you up
And sweetly demand that I fill your cup.
I follow your cool gun powder glare
Honey, you lay me bare.

You're the girl of my dreams
And a pistol it seems, but you shoot me straight and true
Time to lay down my bets,
Oh, I put all my money on you.

When I'm in the dark, girl, you bring me to light.
It seems like you're almost always right.
So keep boxing my ears when I sew them shut.
Baby, you sure are tough.

You're the girl of my dreams
And a pistol it seems, but you shoot me straight and true
Time to lay down my fears,
Honey, I feel so safe around you.

If the tiller man taught me anything,
It's that a hard-headed woman is what I need
To help me to always do my best.
Baby, my life is blessed.

You're the girl of my dreams
Darling, please wear this ring
You're an angel through and through.
Time to lay down my life,
Honey, I'd do it gladly for you.

Time to lay down my life,
Honey, I'd do it gladly for you a boyish love song. :-)



I love how you curse when I wake you up
And sweetly demand that I fill your cup.
I follow your cool gun powder glare
Honey, you lay me bare.

You're the girl of my dreams
And a pistol it seems, but you shoot me straight and true
Time to lay down my bets,
Oh, I put all my money on you.

When I'm in the dark, girl, you bring me to light.
It seems like you're almost always right.
So keep boxing my ears when I sew them shut.
Baby, you sure are tough.

You're the girl of my dreams
And a pistol it seems, but you shoot me straight and true
Time to lay down my fears,
Honey, I feel so safe around you.

If the tiller man taught me anything,
It's that a hard-headed woman is what I need
To help me to always do my best.
Baby, my life is blessed.

You're the girl of my dreams
Darling, please wear this ring
You're an angel through and through.
Time to lay down my life,
Honey, I'd do it gladly for you.

Time to lay down my life,
Honey, I'd do it gladly for you