I remember my high school years as years that I spent looking for a love that would save me. I was searching for someone who would love me as I was. The music at the time sort of perpetuated this and I became engrossed with the idea that I could find someone to give my heart to. The love songs, whether from the pop, soul or country genres, told stories of finding a love that would complete a person. They suggested that all a boy or girl needed was someone to love them and then life would be grand. So in finding this love you could find a savior. Someone who could rescue you from loneliness, disappointment or any other sort of diss. The problem with this is that when your love is not reciprocated, you begin to think that the lyrics may not be true. But I was a trooper. I got to the point where I took rejection in stride and continued on in my quest for finding love and happiness. A complete package was out there just waiting for me.
As we grow older and we realize that no one person can truly complete us, we realize that we are still searching for something that is still out there somewhere. A complete and perfect love. A truly unconditional love. We try other ways to find it while still holding onto the “love of our lives”. Some play the game of duplicity. Others go on a quest for knowledge; for something greater than what they already have and possess. Not realizing that what they are looking for is not in human form at all. At it's deepest level, love is a spiritual thing. We are born with an innate sense of longing for it. The missing piece to our inward puzzle is found in something from outside of ourselves; and is incapable of being found in another human being. Oh we say that we have found love. We marry and have children and dogs and cats. We love certain foods and desserts. We love our favorite TV shows and sports teams. But in the end, those things never really bring true joy and contentment. Our team loses the big game. Our favorite show comes to an end. If we ate only the foods we loved all the time, we would become bored with them and they would no longer be our favorite. Pets run away, get run over or grow old and eventually die. The fight with the spouse makes it known that it is not a complete and perfect love. No, the answer lies somewhere beyond. Beyond this planet with all of its good things to enjoy. Beyond the sun, moon and stars and all of their shining glory.
Little did I know that I had met Love a long time ago. I had accepted parts of an incredible story but never fully understood the crazy and unfathomable Love being offered. A Love that would make the heavens, the earth and everything in them. A Love that offered a choice in a Garden, that His image-bearers would get wrong. A Love that had to stand back and watch as everything good that He had created would turn into less than good. Thorns and Thistles and hardened ground would become the way of the world. Original intent went terribly wrong with that choice to believe that Love was somehow holding out on those image-bearers. And so original design became corrupted and ever since the world has groaned. They lost the Garden but not His Love, but that was there heart's cry ever after. Down through the centuries, He still hovered, waiting patiently for those fallen beings to accept His Love. A Love that would come and eventually lay down His own Life for their sins, their misdeeds. He did so to restore them to the more perfect way. The way of Love through relationship with Him, and we have been choosing to this day.
My own understanding of this Love, was one of rejection when I did wrong or didn't perform well. My dance was my own, but I got the steps wrong. Rather than seeing Love for the Truth that He was, I was told and sold a lie. That He only accepted those who could be good. That He only accepted those who would continuously follow Him, although with my blackened heart, I could not do that for long. I did not understand that His Death gave to me Life. That the rejection I felt was not from Him, but the image I had made of Him in my own mind. His Truth was fighting to break through the lies that I had believed. But it would take years to undo all of that. Through the loneliness of a marriage that could not complete. Through the pain of a love that rejected me. The false idea of love began to crack and to crumble until all I could see was Love standing there. He knew the hurt and the pain. The rejection and loneliness that I had gone through. The symptoms of trying to find love outside of Him. To find completeness somewhere else, even within. The original fellowship that had been lost all of those years ago, became True to me as I ran into Love's arms and embraced the only one that could love me through the mess I had made. Even though He should have only felt my rejection of Him, He still offered to me the same fellowship as He did to those in the Garden centuries before. I found, in Him, complete and total Love. No more questions and wondering if rumors were true. No more believing that an ancient book could be wrong. I had found the Truth and His name was Love.
As we grow older and we realize that no one person can truly complete us, we realize that we are still searching for something that is still out there somewhere. A complete and perfect love. A truly unconditional love. We try other ways to find it while still holding onto the “love of our lives”. Some play the game of duplicity. Others go on a quest for knowledge; for something greater than what they already have and possess. Not realizing that what they are looking for is not in human form at all. At it's deepest level, love is a spiritual thing. We are born with an innate sense of longing for it. The missing piece to our inward puzzle is found in something from outside of ourselves; and is incapable of being found in another human being. Oh we say that we have found love. We marry and have children and dogs and cats. We love certain foods and desserts. We love our favorite TV shows and sports teams. But in the end, those things never really bring true joy and contentment. Our team loses the big game. Our favorite show comes to an end. If we ate only the foods we loved all the time, we would become bored with them and they would no longer be our favorite. Pets run away, get run over or grow old and eventually die. The fight with the spouse makes it known that it is not a complete and perfect love. No, the answer lies somewhere beyond. Beyond this planet with all of its good things to enjoy. Beyond the sun, moon and stars and all of their shining glory.
Little did I know that I had met Love a long time ago. I had accepted parts of an incredible story but never fully understood the crazy and unfathomable Love being offered. A Love that would make the heavens, the earth and everything in them. A Love that offered a choice in a Garden, that His image-bearers would get wrong. A Love that had to stand back and watch as everything good that He had created would turn into less than good. Thorns and Thistles and hardened ground would become the way of the world. Original intent went terribly wrong with that choice to believe that Love was somehow holding out on those image-bearers. And so original design became corrupted and ever since the world has groaned. They lost the Garden but not His Love, but that was there heart's cry ever after. Down through the centuries, He still hovered, waiting patiently for those fallen beings to accept His Love. A Love that would come and eventually lay down His own Life for their sins, their misdeeds. He did so to restore them to the more perfect way. The way of Love through relationship with Him, and we have been choosing to this day.
My own understanding of this Love, was one of rejection when I did wrong or didn't perform well. My dance was my own, but I got the steps wrong. Rather than seeing Love for the Truth that He was, I was told and sold a lie. That He only accepted those who could be good. That He only accepted those who would continuously follow Him, although with my blackened heart, I could not do that for long. I did not understand that His Death gave to me Life. That the rejection I felt was not from Him, but the image I had made of Him in my own mind. His Truth was fighting to break through the lies that I had believed. But it would take years to undo all of that. Through the loneliness of a marriage that could not complete. Through the pain of a love that rejected me. The false idea of love began to crack and to crumble until all I could see was Love standing there. He knew the hurt and the pain. The rejection and loneliness that I had gone through. The symptoms of trying to find love outside of Him. To find completeness somewhere else, even within. The original fellowship that had been lost all of those years ago, became True to me as I ran into Love's arms and embraced the only one that could love me through the mess I had made. Even though He should have only felt my rejection of Him, He still offered to me the same fellowship as He did to those in the Garden centuries before. I found, in Him, complete and total Love. No more questions and wondering if rumors were true. No more believing that an ancient book could be wrong. I had found the Truth and His name was Love.
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