In Love’s service, only wounded soldiers can serve.
~Brennan Manning, Abba’s Child: The Cry of the Heart for Intimate Belonging
If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing…. Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things…. Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.
So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
~ paul, The Least of The Apostles, in 1 Corinthians 13
Oh beloved, it is true. There are things we wish we could do, and simply can’t. We want to be people who manifest the fruit of the Spirit, but we simply can’t. Because the fruit are not behaviors or characteristics of human beings. They are the Him that grows in us.
And the hardest is Love. Because Love is all of who He is. Love is the substance of the Divine. Love is the bond that holds Trinity in Union. Love is the infinite strength of the One who spoke universes into being on a day He alone chose.
Oh G_d, how do we do this? It is impossible.
And He answers, “Just Love.”
“How Father? I can’t do it.”
He Answers, “Love is not doing. Love simply is.
No time
No expectation
No change
No frustration
No needs
No self
No performance
All forever
All giving
Always
All hope
All for the other
All true
All powerful
Love is Me.”
We respond, “So… You are saying….?”
And He answers, “Yes child. Me, being Me. In you. That’s all.”
“They are so hurtful. Is it OK that i hurt when i Love them?”
“Yes beloved, it is a requirement.”
“Oh Papa, i am so tired. What if they never Love back?”
“That question precludes Love dear one. It is irrelevant.”
And then we get it. Love is not a part of what G_d is like. Love is the summation of who He is.
All the unity
All the power
All the immutability
All the holiness
All the grace
All the mercy
All the justice
All the honor
All the riches
Everything.
Love is all of G_d, being G_d, in me. And that is why it is laughingly impossible for a human to believe that they can Love another in their own strength. And anything we come up with – that we can actually do – is simply not Love (no matter what it feels like).
Can we see it though? This is why Love never fails. This is why it is called the steadfast (even covenant) Love of G_d in the Old Testament. To think that the same One(s) who spoke eternity into existence, that they They might dwell therein, would fail – is a folly whose height exceeds even our own thoughts that we could Love others on our own.
So, are you feeling like you are not loving well? It is not because you don’t have the right amount of it or whatever. It is because whatever you (or this same fool of a writer) thinks we are doing, is Love. It is not. Love never fails. Tonight is our night beloved. Time to let Him be Himself, in us. And if we do, we will then begin on a path from which we never need fall.
Love is Him, being Himself, in us – for others.
