My Heart: Hardly loving

And I don't know, what to do with a love like that.

And I don't know, how to be a love like that.

- David Crowder Band

It struck me the other day, looking at a story I've seen and heard and learned from a hundred times, just how unlike me Jesus loves. This whole thing refers to Mark 14:12-31. It's the Passover. Jesus is about to die. No, Jesus is about to be brutally tortured and murdered. Jesus is about to be put to death by the people he's been preaching the kingdom of God to. The people he has been healing, feeding, and freeing are about to consent to his death. More than this, the people he has called friends, the people that have walked with, ate with, learned from, and were most intimately loved by and empowered by Jesus, they're about to scatter in his moment of need. His best friends are about to abandon him when Jesus could most use support and comfort of community. One of them is going to deny that they are even friends. Another is responsible for betraying him to those that want him dead.

Jesus knows all this. He knows his friends don't love him as much as he loves them. He knows that they will not stick by him when things become hardest for him. What does he do? He eats with them. He prays with them. He teaches them of his love. He talks with them while reclining in an intimate setting. He sings a hymn with them. He is concerned with their fight with temptation more than their abandonment of him. He loves them deeply, visually, in an intimate, emotional relationship.

I wouldn't do this. I'm too weak to love like this. If I knew my closest friends were going to abandon me when my life got really hard, I would cut off some of our intimacy. I would not pursue a stronger relationship with them. I'd care about them and want the best for them. But their betrayal, denial, and conditional friendship would hurt me too deep to be able to continue deepening and being vulnerable within our relationship. I would find new friends. I would be by myself. I would detach so that I would hurt less. I would not actively love them well. I would not pursue their best through my own relational sharing.

I don't know how to be a love like that. I'm too weak, too self-centered, too needy, too proud, too unhealthy, too sinful. I'm sorry for loving poorly. May you and God forgive me, and may He change me and fill me that His love will always flow through me to others, to you.