That I May Truly Live

This morning as I sat down with my Jesus I found myself confessing a fear that I didn't really know I had... love. Love heals and love hurts, it is such a strange thing. I have often prayed that God would fill me with love for His people and that my heart would be overcome with compassion. 
I think God has so blessed me with having a heart similar to His that I have caught the slightest, tiniest glimpse of the sorrow He experiences when He loves unsparingly and is often rejected. 
Not that I claim to have a heart as unselfish or near as loving as Christ's, but I've experienced a taste. 

As I sat and contemplated this wonderful aspect of God, a phrase from a song began to play in my head, "Did e'er such love and sorrow meet." At the same moment, "Beloved" by Tenth Avenue North was playing from my Time Alone with God playlist and the words "You're My beloved, Lover I'm yours. Death shall not part us It's you I died for" seemed to come at just the right moment. 

The song about love and sorrow coming together is from a hymn that I've sung a million times but never realized just how beautiful the words are. 

See from His head His hands His feet
Sorrow and love flow mingled down
Did e'er such love and sorrow meet
Or thorns compose so rich a crown

Oh the wonderful cross 
Bids me come and die and find
That I may truly live

Isn't that beautiful? It reminds of Home Alone 2 when Kevin is telling the weird bird lady, "What's the point in having a heart so guarded if you never use it to love others?" You see, I'm quite certain that I've come out of my valley of darkness that lasted almost the entirety of last semester, but I have not yet come to a place where I am on fire or overflowing with joy. I was talking to God about that last night and asking Him when I would come back to that point again. He told me when I let myself get close enough to Him. It's funny, you'd think that wouldn't be a problem for me. But I think I've quite developed a fear of being super close to God because I don't know what He wants to do with me. But I remember my pastor once saying, "When you keep God at a safe distance, you will be safe..and distant." And that is where I am now. I'm not so far from Him that I can't see or hear Him or experience the goodness of His presence, but I'm hesitant to fall in love with Him again because I know  that would I  drink of the same cup. (If that makes sense.)

Christ did not promise it would be easy to love and follow Him. If anything, He promised that it would be hard and painful and difficult. But He also promised to be close and to carry us through the waters and that He would guard and protect. I think, too often, I've believed that when He says He is my protector that I think that means He will protect me from experiencing pain. That's not true. He promised to protect me from getting crushed when I am pressed. He promised to protect me from being abandoned when I am rejected. He promised to protect me from a normal, boring life. But when we say "yes" to going on an adventure with Jesus, we say "yes" to pain. We say "yes" to love and sorrow. We say "yes" to joy in the midst of trials. We say "yes" to much of the same anguish that the Lord already knows. And in the same incredible instant, we say "yes" to a love more deep and more glorious than we can ever comprehend. We say "yes" to a joy so unmoving and a peace so incomprendable that we could never in a million years wrap our minds around. 

We say "yes" to life. To live is Christ and to die is gain. Christ is love. To live is to love. 

Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us. We know that we live in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in him and he in God. And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him. In this way, love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment, because in this world we are like him. There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. And so I have come to a place in my life, for the umpteenth time of course, where I have to make a choice, a choice much like deciding to throw myself out of an airplane. Yes, I can keep on going and be at a safe distance and accept being safe and distant, but my heart will never be satisfied with that.  Love... it's a choice. Not an emotion or feeling. Love is Jesus. So with some crazy leap of faith and total recklessness that is what I choose. I think my brother said it best just before he jumped 364ft off of a bridge over Victoria Falls, "I'm ready to live."