I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love.
~ Mother Teresa of Calcutta
We should all like life to be free from suffering, and our love to be free from pain. But there is no true love without suffering. So the highest love of all, the love of Christ for men, showed unforgettably how deeply he must suffer in order to bring men to himself.
~ J. B. Phillips (1906-1982)
What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised— who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.” No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
~ Paul, the least of the Apostles, in Romans 8
For an ex-addict, it is called “The new normal.” Oh beloved, sometimes life hurts. And sometimes it hurts not so much because we have brought the pain on ourselves. Now, surely, very much of the pain we face is self-inflicted. Our sin, our selfishness (is there any difference?) is usually the reason we hurt.
Sometimes, though, we simply move towards people in Love and they:
reject it
or are not ready for it
or do not want it
or smack it down
or lash out
or betray it
or get mad
or get defensive
or get distrustful
or get hateful
or something else…
And this hurts.
What to do?!? Love anyway.
How?
Be who we are.
What? Yeah, can we see it? Back in Romans 6 (and other passages), Paul makes an oft-repeated statement of truth about what our loving Savior did for us at the cross.
Friends, we have been united with, and empowered by, the One who bore the greatest pain ever to free us from our sins and even from ourselves. We are (becoming) like Him. Even our failures are being used to bring Him glory and make us into the people who will serve Him and commune with Him as a beloved spouse forever in a kingdom that will have no end.
As believers in Christ, we are made able to love courageously because we are literally infilled with the Love that made the worlds. The Love that tore Himself apart to bring us into fellowship with Himself can, and will, make the way. That others reject it, judge it, dislike it, impugn it, scorn it, mock it, belittle it, twist it, misunderstand it, slander it, gossip about it, and fume against it becomes irrelevant in this Light. We simply Love that some might taste and see the truth that there really is a loving God.
So, yeah, Love can hurt. And people are worth it. At least Jesus thinks each of us worth it. Would that we would reckon ourselves united with Him, and pour out real love on people regardless of the pain we feel.
