If my life were a question it might be worded this way: “Is it in a man to love?” I want to believe in love with all my heart, with my whole life. But my personal history has hardly been an example of faithful love. Even as I have desired to be loved throughout my life and that desire has been left wanting, so my efforts at loving completely and with faithfulness have finally met with failure.
It’s been said that love is an overused word, that we really don’t even know what we mean when we say it anymore. It’s a code word for any number of things. For some people “I love you” falls so easily off the tongue that we question the depth of their sincerity. And it’s also true that words themselves fail to be taken seriously anymore as we humans drift in and out of relations with each other without thought for our proximity or the effects of any forms of language we encounter.
I also see people desperate for real relationships but unsure of themselves. There are few things more frustrating than a promise unfulfilled, and the ultimate promise is from God. The first part of God’s promise is that he himself shaped people in his image and called them (male and female)“very good.” He created them from earth so that in relation to creation and to himself they would be as he intended. God’s creation act is the first sign of promise. We are made for a reason. We are good.
Far from being exhausted with humans or fearful our weaknesses, God emptied himself and became a man to reconcile us to himself. Jesus set an example of love for his disciples in washing their feet, commanded that they love each other as he loved them, and then laid down his life in the Supreme act of love. This activity precluded one simple belief on God’s part. That we are capable of Love. That in spite of the possibility that we would choose otherwise God invests himself in us for a future joy, a future hope that he will right us.
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