Sunday, July 12, 2015

Devotion 336 love

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.  It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.  
Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.  It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
 Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away.   1 Cor. 13 : 4-8

Yes,  you and me both.  I have heard these words at every wedding we have ever attended.  I have heard the preacher say them too.  The preacher reads them whenever he gets down in the trenches and talks about the way we should live, love and breathe the air of life.
 I would admit though, even after 27 years of marriage,  I am still learning this crazy word LOVE.

When you marry, you think you finally “get it.”  We have given and received something divine.  It is miraculous and it is holy.

Then that first baby comes along.  And the lessons begin anew.  Our baby is our teacher and our classroom opens before dawn and the lessons continue until the wee hours of the night.  This love is not soon returned.

We wait for the first smile, the first impromptu kiss, the first neck strangling hug and we are addicted.  And, we want more.  We want our babies to feel love, to know love, to have more of the things they love. 


We build fantasies for these little babies of ours.  We want them to live in kingdoms of princesses and on imaginary battlefields where good always wins. We want to shield them from sadness and surround them with joy.

But ever slow slowly, as months turn to years and their beautiful little eyes look outward, we realize we cannot fashion their lives filled exclusively with love.  Evil creeps in, sadness too.  Fantasy ever so slowly becomes tainted with reality and love must find its home not in toys and trinkets but in deep spaces in the heart.

And the mama takes a long deep breath and wonders if she has really taught about the love that never fails.

The love that is patient and kind.  
My wee daughter, the fourth of my babies lay in her hospital bed.  She had just seconds before awoke from her surgery.  As her eyes open she thrashed the braces off her arms trying to touch the face that had just been altered with a surgeon’s knife.  I explained quickly and in the most whispered of tones that it was all over.  This day that I had feared for three years was done.  She was breathing and well and beautiful.


She hushed me with her eyes; she took her hands and framed her cheeks.  She waved her fingers from her nose to her mouth and in her raspy, tired voice said, “Mama, I do not love this.” 
That is my daughter.  Her life at 5-years old is a series of black and white events and my heart broke just a little bit that I could not take away the pain, the need to recover, the needle in her arm, and the stitches.  Nothing.  I could not make her love an unlovable situation.

The little princess that plays castles and ponies could not imagine her way out of this and neither could I.

 I laid my head next to her for a long moment as she closed her eyes and fell back to sleep.  I wondered how it is our search for this thing called love skips right over the Creator of Love.

I fill my home with lovely things.  I cram my weekend with lovely events.  But it is moments.  Moments of pain, frustration, exhaustion, and failure;  the moments we run madly from, that teach us the meaning of both life and love.

 Love is patient.
Strange how there is nothing quick or easy about patience.
 Love is kind.
It is not romance or dates or candlelit paths. 
 Love is simple.
It is warm tea and random.


It does not boast or seek for itself, but am I not in constant hunt for this elusive love.    Perhaps I look in the most wrong of places.  Perhaps I hunt in markets or media, when all I have ever needed of love is welled within my soul.
If it truly “always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres,” isn’t that my clue to the treasure of Him.  I cannot manufacture anything that is ALWAYS.  Only He can.
And if this treasure is within us, is it not already found and meant to be shared not sought?
 I kiss my little daughter.  I kiss her forehead and her hands and I pray for her.  I pray that in these moments where I am completely and totally helpless, she discovers where her strength comes from and will ALWAYS persevere.
No Ava, I can do nothing, but Jesus, the Lover of your life and soul, can.
He is the wellspring of love, the furnisher of healing and the author of peace.  He never fails. 
Let all that you do be done in love.

  1 Cor. 16:14

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