Last week I described the instantaneous connection that parents generally feel at the birth of their child as an example of “unexplainable” love. Of course, there are others. Why does Romeo “love” Juliet? What makes us suddenly decide we “love” music, or medicine, or tennis?
Our expression in English of “falling in love” gives us a good picture of these unfathomable affections. They seem to happen to us by accident and suddenly we’re tripped up from the path we were following and delightfully content to change course in order to accommodate the new love. Here again we find the holy markers of Joy – both the sense of surprise and the awe of expectations being exceeded.
The problem with falling in love is what comes after.
Loving is nothing like falling in love.
There is nothing accidental about committed loving and much of the time our acts of loving “surprise” us with disappointment. I’ve discussed before M Scott Peck’s judgment that love always involves hard work and courage and Brené Brown’s discovery that our willingness to suffer – to be vulnerable – correlates directly with how much and how well we can love others.
But this is what we sign up for when we “fall” in love – with a mate, a child, a pet, a career – anything that awakens our sense of passion and worthiness.
And this is what God signed up for when the Lord created us.
When I taught parenting classes we used to quip that parenting was a lifetime sentence. Now I think about what it meant for the Lord to commit to being our God. I muse that God swooned for our human ancestors as they were evolving physically, mentally, and spiritually. Unlike us, the Lord knew the cost of sustaining a relationship with humans and took it on anyway.
We’re like our Maker in our ability to fall in love. Where we need help is in learning how to love once those attachments are formed. Fortunately, we have a Lord who is constantly showing us the “how” in the way God loves us. We need to be taking notes!
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