Full disclosure: I volunteered to write a blog post this week before learning the specific subject of the sermon. Had I known that Pastor Justin would be speaking about love, I probably would have opted for a different week.

What’s so difficult about love? It’s one of those topics that on the surface seems safe and non-controversial. “God is love” is one of the few verses you can quote and be pretty certain of not offending anyone. And yet this subject is incredibly challenging for me personally.

Song of Solomon tells the story of the shepherd wooing his beloved. It’s unapologetically, intimately romantic - and it conveys the deeper meaning of just how passionately God loves us. As a single person, romantic love is not something with which I have much experience, and it can be a sore subject at times. I’ve only been in love once, and getting my heart broken made me wary of jumping into relationships too quickly. Because I live alone and not as part of a family, I don’t say or receive the words “I love you” on a regular basis. Furthermore, as an engineer, I like to deal with things that can be measured and controlled; squishy emotional concepts like love take me WAY outside my comfort zone.

While I accept intellectually that God loves me, I often don’t feel it. I think there are several reasons for this. First, God’s love is too big to really grasp, like a painting where the individual brush strokes don’t seem to mean anything until we back up far enough to see the big picture. Paul touched on this idea in Ephesians 3:18-19, when he prayed that his readers “may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge…”

A second reason why I don’t always feel the truth of God’s love is that I don’t want to. My rebellious heart is far too comfortable filling my life with busy distractions that ultimately don’t place any demands or require change. If I truly understand that God loves me, not just in some generic sense but intensely and personally, it changes everything. Love like that isn’t something that can be met with indifference, any more than I could respond to a marriage proposal with a shrug. It takes away my excuses and exposes the adulterous wanderings of my heart. It demands a response: either to reject love’s call or to run into the arms of the One who loves me.

Living by myself can be lonely, but I’ve come to appreciate the freedom that it brings. If I want to eat dinner at 8pm, no one else is going hungry in the meantime. I never have to worry that someone else will put the milk back in the “wrong” place in the fridge where I can’t find it, or start a load of laundry while I’m in the shower. When I have family visiting from out of town, it can be an uncomfortable experience as I temporarily adjust my life to their habits and needs (and am confronted by my own selfishness). If I were to enter into a serious relationship, that effect would be magnified by the disruption of two lives meshing together. How much more so when we recognize and accept the love of Jesus! Love is not an inconvenience; it’s worth every change we have to make. But it does require change, especially as we learn to extend that love to the world. May I come face to face with God’s love in a way that disrupts my self-centeredness and leads me to share that love with those around me.

~ Joanna Hinks