loving is costly, but worth it

"There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket — safe, dark, motionless, airless — it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell. I believe that the most lawless and inordinate loves are less contrary to God’s will than a self-invited and self-protective lovelessness…We shall draw nearer to God, not by trying to avoid the sufferings inherent in all loves, but by accepting them and offering them to Him; throwing away all defensive armour. If our hearts need to be broken, and if He chooses this as a way in which they should break, so be it."
-CS Lewis, "The Four Loves"

My dear friend/mentor, Patti Wither's shared this quote with me the other day when I was meeting with her. Reminding me that it is FAR better to love then to walk away. We are called as Christians to be known for our love. Perhaps, that is not the first thing on my mind, I am quick to be so self-centered in love. Oh how I long to point people to the love that has been given to me in Christ. That I would resolve at every station I find myself in to love. Regardless of how I feel, how busy I think I am, or how risky it may seem. It is completely worth it.

How? Why?
Well, now are able to love each other well, unto the glory of God. This is only possible through the work of Christ. He has given us a new heart and has written on our new heart His law (Ezekiel 36:26-28), which can be summed up by "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself"(Luke 10:27). Therefore, we are new creations, the old is gone and the new has come (2 Corinthians 5:17-18). What hope this brings because the Lord is going to continue to provide all the grace I need to love. This is freeing because it's not a love that is built in my strength or my vanity or for my glory. He will cause me to love, despite who I naturally am. In order to point to the One who has the power to change sinners and make them love in the way the Christ has loved us first. This is the mystery of the power of the Gospel at work!

Let us grow in love for each other by bearing with each other and even learning to love when the love is not returned. For ultimately that is the Gospel. Christ loved at all cost. He never stopped going forward to the Cross until His love for His people was fully expressed through the shedding of His own blood. Christ is the ultimate display of love. Therefore, we have hope that He will teach us to love each other and learn to prefer each other over our own interest.

May He give us grace to walk worthy in the manner of which He has called us. May He pour grace over our lives and remind us of the love He has given us, so that we may in turn and love those He has placed around us. Not in vain but simply so we may reflect His love!

"If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing." 1 Corinthians 13:1-3