To Love recklessly right up to the edge of pain, and then to find that there is no pain – only more Love to be found along an ever-growing frontier… this is Love.
Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends. You are My friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you slaves, for the slave does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you. You did not choose Me but I chose you, and appointed you that you would go and bear fruit, and that your fruit would remain, so that whatever you ask of the Father in My name He may give to you. This I command you, that you love one another
~ Jesus, King of the Universe, in John 15:13-17
This writer is embroiled in a romance written a very long time ago. Somewhere in the Council of the Ages, the matchless and manifold wisdom of the Triune One put together an impossible combination of events that ended with a woman 9,300 miles away literally walking into my room and introducing herself. And within 30 seconds of knowing her name, i knew she was the princess of a woman He had been promising me i would meet for months.
She had heard my voice in a dream. And she knew i was the one she was looking for the very first moment we spoke on the phone.
Great mystical, romantic stuff! And the signs and symbols go on from there. So many things point to us getting together that any other proposition is simply laughable. To not explore this relationship fully would simply be rebellion against Providence Himself.
So, but there is a start. It is only a beginning. Where is the end?
There is no end.
See beloved, true love never fails. He is the Author of such Love. It therefore is incapable of breaking. In fact, it can only be made new every morning. Because true love is not purely romance – though it most surely is that. True love is the profound concern for the well-being of another. It is the pouring out of oneself without regard for the potential of return. It is, in marriage, very physical. And in every case we love everything as the object of our affection. And that moves a heart to abandon itself and simply give until it hurts.
In real Love, one wants everything from the other. But more so, Love wants everything FOR the other. Every idea the other has, every corner of their soul, every potential for intimacy, every need the other has being protected, every facet of the other’s spirit, every way they need to be provided for, every way they need to be listened to and heard, every way the other needs to be cherished and held. This is what one wants from the other… and this the other will have unconditionally from us.
This is Love. It is an edgeless wonder. It is a frontier of goodness that only gets bigger and more profound as one drives deeper into the unknown. Yet even in the growth of scope and magnificence of Love, there is a comfort and containment and structure and binding-together that is the perfect compliment to the wide open spaces.
And this, beloved, is perhaps gives us understanding into our why G_d is Love. He is neverending. He is who holds everything together. He is who makes everything make sense.
