Shrinking Love

The softest heart, the widest embrace, and the deepest expression of love in the world belongs to God.

God created the world, gifted life, and declared all he carefully fashioned as good, free to roam, explore, and prosper. Love was flung wide everywhere; from trees to oceans, to mountains, to sparkling night skies, and most magnificently in the wonder of humanity. Nothing tight fisted nor miserly. All was fearfully and wonderfully made, without puppet strings, coercion, or conditions. Love was generous, creative, unselfish, and joyful; lavished over all with equal measure.

It would have been easy to miss the key inter-relationship of it all. Just as the rain depends on the oceans and lakes, the oceans and lakes depend upon the rain. Together they rise and fall, various forms of humidity, mist, snow, sleet, and rain; all working through the changing seasons to sustain the gift of life, to nurture and cherish what was created with much thoughtfulness and care.

So too, love. Intimately and intricately flowing from God to creation, giving and receiving, rising up and pouring out, all for the greater good of a delicately sensitive world. Each depending and relying on the other, and the other, and the other; cooperating and committed together.

History reminds, warns, and declares how much we have struggled, how far we have fallen, how diluted and distant that original essence and meaning of our being has devolved. The cry for independence, self-fulfillment, ownership, identity, power, and self aggrandizement has brutally severed us from God’s big love.

As lakes deprived of rain become deserts, love snatched from the heart of God shrinks alarmingly and swiftly. It shrivels like a prune, a view of the world reduces to little more than the individual self. Shriveled love becomes self serving, tribal, exclusive, highly conditional, fickle, and never spares a thought for grace or mercy.

God grieved over the earth and what had become of his glorious creation. Despite all he witnessed his love never changed, one iota. In fact, if it were possible, it grew even larger.

Into the shriveled world, so lost and depraved, God sent his son to reveal, remind, restore, and deliver.

Jesus revealed the love of God as a generous and kind father. He demonstrated the big love of the Father offered to all creatures, great and small. His embrace and healing extends to all tribes, all countries, all peoples, with no exceptions. His big love touches the unclean, raises up the downtrodden, gives hope to the hopeless, pours life into death, sets captives free, and forgives with joy all who ask, without condition or humiliation.

Ultimately God’s big love was crucified. It was offensive to those who had shrunk in love, minds, vision, and sense of purpose. They saw no further than what their hands could hold, their thoughts could comprehend, and their fear of losing their rags of status and possessions could tolerate. The blood of the Cross stained them but couldn’t save them, for they were not willing.

For those who have eyes to see, and ears to hear, the Blood of the Cross, the risen Jesus, is the most indescribable expression of God’s big love restored, and revitalized; quite impossible to crucify. Untethered from Jesus, God’s big love can never be mimicked, reproduced, or hijacked. Severed from God as source, love reduces inevitably to so much less. Words resounding like clanging gongs. Theologies, dogmas, denominations, us and them, tribalism, works. Small human-like edifices without power, grace, or hope. Silos of faith, declarations, justifications, and on and on, like tumbleweeds blown in the desert wind.

God’s big love surprises, goes against the human tide, touches the most unlovely, heals the most disfigured, raises up the outcast, and forgives the least and the lost. It is not sentimental, or weak; it never hides its face from injustice. It is rooted in truth and marks every action with its hallmark of love.

Here’s the thing. God’s big love is rooted in action. It becomes flesh, in human form; to be touched, experienced, given, received, and even possibly rejected. God’s big love is an invitation to be counter-intuitive, salt, and light. It calls us to love others, even when we don’t like them. To love our enemies and even lay down our lives if necessary. Shriveled love operates from a small space dependent upon liking or agreeing. God’s big love releases us to passionately disagree while still desiring the best for the other. It does not require conformity, uniformity, friendship, or ‘chemistry’. God’s big love builds a fire on the beach and cooks breakfast for disciples who betrayed, rejected, knew better, and counted themselves disqualified. It is only found through flesh filled with His love and His Spirit. It’s amazing grace, love, healing, and hope filled.

Amazing grace/love, how sweet the sound, that saved a ‘prune’ like me…..

All of us with any self-awareness must surely confess how much of a prune we have become in our capacity to love. “But I’m not God or Jesus!” we protest. That’s not the point. No human has the capability to love like God loves – if we rely upon ourselves. Transformation of love begins as we recognize our inability and open our hearts to him personally, first. It is his love that transforms a shriveled prune into juicy fruit. Others will taste and see, love will flow, and there will be little effort as we become less. He will increase and our love will grow bigger, wider, deeper, and so much more generous – to all. A testimony to Him – alive – in and through us!

The world desperately needs God’s big love. It seems so far away, and yet it’s always been right here. It all depends on our source, and where we are connected, or not.

“Love one another, as I have loved you.” (John 13:24)