I was just waking up and thinking about turning on the coffee machine when the strains of an old song by Gene Pitney wafted through my window. My neighbour loves some of the old tunes, so he was playing “Only love can break your heart, and only love can mend it again”. That is so true I thought, and so this blog was ruminated on, thought about, meditated on, prayed about and subsequently written.
When the Beatles sang “All you need is love”, they were quite right. It is all we need, but it is the source of the so called love that is called into question. Love can be quite altruistic and kind, a tender and generous outpouring of emotion or commitment to a person or a cause. Think of saving the whales or the pro lifers. Human beings are built to feel love, to love others and to love humanity as a whole. That is how God made us. So what has gone wrong? Who broke the love?
‘Tainted love’ (ha ha from the group Soft Cell) is a flawed kind of love. Obsessive, needy, objectifying and full of expectations of what the other will give to you because of your ‘love’. There are other ways love goes wrong. Peodophilia is wrong, because it is not ‘love’ to project your own selfish desires onto a vulnerable child. Likewise, greed in high places, slavery, human trafficking, war and domination of people is not born of love. Power is not love. Corruption desensitises the power of love. Manipulation and coercion, gas lighting, brutality and inflicting pain is not love. We can only love in a pure way if our ‘loveometer’ is repaired. And that is where God comes in.
“Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love” John 4: 8. He showed the depths of his passionate love for us by allowing his only son Jesus to bear the burden of our sin separation on the cross. Only pure, unsullied love from a being far greater than us could accomplish this. God takes our broken hearts, our broken relationships, damaged lives, ruined finances and weakened health and restores us by the power of his great love. On this Good Friday, I ponder on how deep his love is for mankind. When people say that God does not care, they are mislead. He did not cause the chaos and depravity in the world. Our sin natures chose that, and we reap the consequences in our lives and relationships until our ability to love is replaced with the pure love of God. He does that for us, because of love. He is the essence of love from which all love pours forth.
“And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them” 1 John 4:16. Having a deep and responsive relationship with God repairs our selfish and needy requirements of love. When we live in his love, basking in it, confident that no matter what the circumstances his love is enduring and eternal, then the onus on us ‘trying’ to love ourselves and others in our own strength is transformed into us just loving God as our father, and allowing his pure love to change us into the image of is son Jesus. We can then begin to love with his love. 1 John 4: 19 says “we love, because he first loved us”. A heart repaired and filled with the love of God can begin to love others without the need of self protection and hidden agendas.
So yes, all those songs from Neil Young and other crooners about broken hearts can make us feel maudlin and sad. Just watching the news for half an hour can make us wonder where the love has gone, but this world – steeped in sin and separation from God can only be repaired, as we are, by pure love. A love so strong that it makes me weep from gratitude. Without God’s love I would be a lonely, embittered old woman living a whining and self absorbed selfish life, smoking rollies on the veranda and moaning into my wineglass or coffee cup. Because I have God’s pure love, through a transfusion of love, the blood of his son, I am able to shine his love out into the darkness. For this I am grateful. I am blessed, and I want you to know his love too. Just ask him, and he will show you.
Thrive 