Have you ever loved so much it hurt? Loved those unlovely souls who need a tender touch from God? I’m talking about the people no one wants to think about, like the woman imprisoned for murder, the lowly, blind beggar in India, or the drug addict on the street corner. Those kinds of unlovely.
How do we come to a point where we can show God’s love without pulling back in dismay? Come to think of it, how do we learn to respond in an appropriate Christian way to the horrors and heart-rending monstrosities experienced by the unlucky ones?
I have. I have learned.
I have cried with a woman who killed her child, lost a part of myself to someone who feared death, and knelt beside a sleeping child whose mother abandoned her.
There is a method of spiritual growth that allows us to have that Mother Teresa kind of passion. A passion for love, not just any love, but the kind that moves your heart to tears and your feet to action.
Can you love cross-culturally? Give time to one of another nationality? Allow them to live in your home? Listen for hours to one who weeps over an abused childhood so different from yours? Travel the world to look into the eyes of a lonely widow?
Yes, you can learn to love. I have. By God’s grace, I love. Not perfectly, but, with His guidance through my life, I have learned to love. It sometimes hurts so deeply that I think my heart will stop, but it hasn’t. My spirit just keeps on loving, more and more, deeper and deeper.
I cannot love on my own. I am too selfish, it is possible only by allowing God’s love to flow through me. God is the source of love and He alone can teach about true, everlasting love.
You are loved,
kathryn
