Faithful

The most beautiful thing about Love is that it is faithful. Not, that is is faithful, period. No, for that would seem less than meritorious. It is beautiful that love is faithful precisely in the fact that it does not have to be so.
My favorite lines from Jane Austen's "Persuasion" go as follows: "We certainly do not forget you, so soon as you forget us. It is, perhaps, our fate rather than our merit...All the privilege I claim for my own sex (and it is not a very enviable one, you need not covet it) is that of loving longest, when existence or when hope is gone."

Ah! Beautiful!

Now, I have no intention of making a point on men or women loving more or longest or anything. I would say that depends on the type of love and the person and the situation, etc... Read C.S. Lewis' "The Four Loves" for more clarity.

But the very essence of love, of Love himself - this is what I speak of. Of course, the eternal God cannot be unfaithful, because he is all truth, all goodness, all perfection, and cannot contradict himself... yet, he need not will us into existence, need not sustain us, need not be so merciful, so loving, so beautifully captivating that we are drawn desperately into love with him! Yet, he is. And he lives on, loves on, ever-present, ever-faithful.

Truly! Even our parents or brothers and sisters or BFF's are not able to imitate this fidelity of love! He is there.. always. In the midst of our sadness, frustration, disappointment, anger, anxiety, annoyance, despair, even in our most blatant sin... He stands by us. He will not leave. There's no, "packing up and moving on" for him. He is love. Love is eternal. Love is faithful.

One of my favorite lines in Scripture is, "This saying is trustworthy: If we have died with him we shall also live with him; if we persevere we shall also reign with him. But if we deny him he will deny us. If we are unfaithful he remains faithful, for he cannot deny himself" (2 Tim. 2:11-13). 

Oh, what love! What mercy! Who doesn't feel the sting of a love unrequited? Who hasn't suffered the angst and irritation when someone who is supposed to care just simply doesn't? When jealousy or selfishness or pride or vanity keep the other from seeing our needs or from caring about our distress. Who doesn't know the pain of rejection, or not being good enough, or even simply not being enough?
This lover, our God, he didn't stop when we let all of that rejection come from us. He didn't stop. He didn't turn back. He didn't turn his back. No, instead, he held his tongue, and innocently suffered our punishment, just so that he could win us back. This is crazy talk! If we read a novel about a man so in love with a girl who continued to be unfaithful to him, we would either think he was crazy or be brought to tears by his faithfulness. If he actually died to protect her, when she was unaware, and when she kept right on not-returning-his-love because she didn't know he had sacrificed his life for her... well, we ought to be weeping. That's just terrible. And wonderful. And crazy. AND IT HAPPENED. Welcome to Jesus and the Cross. Each and every one of us - he loved us, he loves us, that much!

I hope that one day I love another person so fully and constantly, that if I needed to offer my life for them I would without hesitation. This is why love is amazing. In it's nature as faithful, it makes changes. It brings about conversion, transformation, transfiguration, movement. Love's eternal gift equals love's ever-new-ness. Each morning is new, each moment is new, the other person is new - this is the movement of love in the heart and mind, on the person and the other. It creates and recreates.

Fidelity is something that is always bringing a surprise along with it. We seem to just expect things to stop, or to end if they change. We forget that we ourselves, as people, have been changing since the first minutes of our conception. Our rapid development slows with time, but we still continue to grow and change physically, psychologically, socially, etc.. throughout life. Simply because we notice a change there doesn't mean that what was before is gone. It usually is still present, but a another building block, another foundation stone, another step further up. We build up from what we have. Change doesn't mean totally different, just renewed. Love does this. What was there is still there, but what has come is new and different, and the ever-going-new-and-different leads to a love that never tires, never quits, never ends.

Oh Lord, teach us to love like this! Father, lead your little ones to love you and one another as you have loved us. Amen.