“Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O no, it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand’ring bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.”-William Shakespeare
Love that does not change, is ever faithful, that’s the dream isn’t it? That’s the beauty of the fairytale, the hope of the romantic, the center of the gospel.
That’s the dream isn’t it? That someone will love you unconditionally, every part, warts and all.
But todays cynical world thinks we ask to much of love. That kind of love just doesn’t exists is the general consensus. Marriage is not forever. Happily Ever After is as pretend as Santa Claus.
Ok I might just agree on the Happily Ever After thing, if by that you mean that once you ride off into the sunset with your love you’ll never hit a bump in the road.
But can love truly last always?
And can love truly be unconditional?
What is unconditional love anyway?
These are questions that in some ways are just to big and beautiful to cover in any one post, and as such any one thought may seem incomplete. But when I contemplate unconditional love a thought strikes me.
So often people think unconditional love means that it would never change anything about the person loved, but that is untrue.
Unconditional love loves in spite of any issue or flaw in a person, but I can’t imagine that if the flaw is damaging that love wouldn’t do anything to change it. The love itself does not alter, but love hopes for the best for a person always.
After all, if you love an addict that doesn’t mean you are fine with the addiction.
It may be true that there is nothing you can do to change the addictions and hurts in the person you love, which is why unconditional love loves despite it, but the idea that loves excepts it is not an accurate one.
After all, love should be like a mother who fights for her child to her last breath.
Yet I see this flaw in thinking quite a lot in societies idea of love in this time. We seem to think that for a person to love us they must except and love even our wrong choices. But if they dare to voice a thought that rejects our choices then we feel rejected and unloved.
Why is this?
Yes it is painful for someone to disagree with our choices and lifestyle, to believe that something that we may even see as in us and part of us is “wrong.” But why do we think that that means they don’t love us?
Love shouldn’t be effected by such things.
At least, it’s existence shouldn’t.
But for love to be love it would have a hard time looking at the pain of a loved one, but still it keeps looking because it loves.
This is how God loves us.
He loves us always, no matter what we do, but that doesn’t mean He’s ok with what we do.
Sin kills us. And even if we’ve trusted Christ as our Savior that doesn’t mean allowing sin to still reign in our lives doesn’t harm us. We are robbed every day of so much of the good and the joy He has for our lives because of our lack of this understanding.
So yes, love very much wants to change that which it loves, if what it loves is hurting itself.
Love also wishes change and growth because, again, love wishes for the best of what it loves.
God loves us in this way also.
He not only wishes for our salvation, but for our growth, for our development into everything we were meant to be. This is one reason I find it strange that people can be afraid to trust God with the choices in their lives because they feel they will not be remaining “true to themselves.” If God created us then surely He knows who we are, and we will find out truest self in the place and plan He has for us.
We seem to want to think love is amiable, but that is the last thing we want love to be, because amiability can change with the winds, and love should not. But a firm and unyielding love that wishes for us to grow, to be, and to strive for our best? That can be frightening I suppose. We get comfortable in who we are and how we want to be, and we tend to resent anything that wants to push us out of that little ditch we’ve dug ourselves, even if that thing is love.
It’s odd to think of, but I think in many ways we choose a love that is amiable, shakable, and weak every day, because we don’t want to commit to the firm, steadfast and strong thing that is real. I honestly think we’ve tried hard to change what love is because we don’t want what love is. Maybe that is why we no longer even think love is real.
But love IS real. And it’s glorious and beautiful and wild and amazing.
Just like God.
Who is, after all, Love.
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 them. 1 John 4:16
~Joy Aletheia Stevens
Photo Credit: by Vinoth Chandar (CC BY 2.0)
Photo Credit: by Vinoth Chandar (CC BY 2.0)
Photo Credit: by Charles Clegg(CC BY-SA 2.0)
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