Have you ever tried to love someone? I’m not talking about the endeavor that leads to your own satisfaction, you know, loving someone to be loved in return. I mean loving someone because you just love them. It does not matter what they may say or do or express to you; you will still love them. We don’t have many examples of this kind of love around us, unfortunately. It would be kind of awesome to have love like this going off all around us. I do see it though. It does happen.
When a mother cares for a sick child and finds whatever remedy she can find to ease that child’s distress, no matter the cost, no matter the time required, no matter the thoughts of others, that is close to this kind of love. I see the moms cradling their sick ones oblivious to the possibility that their sick one could make them sick and I see this kind of love. Love like this cares more about the other than the one loving. Love like this sacrifices the lover for the benefit of the beloved.
A mother who at all hours works her hands to the bone, as they say, giving her energy, her time, her hopes and dreams for the little ones sleeping in the next room, demonstrates the possibility that there is a love like this. She would deny herself for the well being of her children. She would drag herself to bed, totally exhausted from her labors of love, all for the vision of her little ones safe, warm, happy and eventually successful. Love like this denies self for the other.
And what about the “stupid” love of brother for brother and sister for sister, who one minute would be fighting between themselves and the next, having someone come between them to hurt one of them, join forces against the common enemy. It doesn’t have to be a physical assault. It could be verbal, written and even a look that is out of place and brothers and sisters join forces in this kind of love. This is one reason political solutions to many international conflicts fail. They do not understand the connections of peoples. The hatreds shared cease in the moment that “brothers” are attacked from outside of the family (no matter how distant that family has grown). They would give themselves to the task of protecting the other against any perceived adversary.
Jesus said in John 15:13, “Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends.” He wasn’t just trying to wow the crowd. He was trying to state a principle that transcends most life experience. Real love, eternal love, ultimate love is best seen in the art, skill and finery of the lover casting all cares aside for the benefit of the beloved.
We talk about it, but we hesitate, often, to express it. We know what it looks like, but we fear letting it become a part of who we are for the cost we know it implies. We know how it feels to be the object of something close to this kind of love. We know the warmth of the right embrace in the loneliest of times. We know the presence of family, even in the midst of disagreement, in the coldest of life experience. We know what it means to be loved when we don’t deserve it.
On this Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, may the love of Christ which overcomes all the pettiness of the world, all the short sightedness of the human frame, all the selfishness and egocentric demands of every tongue, nation and race overcome us. Like a storm raging against the coast, may His love devastate our conceited impudence before the most powerful force in the world. Love.
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