Taking Pictures of Love
Yesterday, I argued that love cannot be divided into discernible parts. When we begin to dismantle love, it falls apart on us. This, of course, makes it extremely difficult for us to truly understand what love is and what it means for our lives. As we examine it, we have to keep turning it over to see its many facets, to see how it sparkles in different lights and reflects different shades. We touch it at varied points and feel its ever changing texture.
All we can really see and experience at a given point in time is one manifestation of love. By examining these manifestations we gain our growing understanding of what love is. That’s where I want to go next with my blogging. That is, I want to take snapshots of what it looks like to love God, love others, and love ourselves. As I discuss these snapshots, remember that these pictures will not encompass the totality of love. We can’t, at the end of my picture taking, assemble all the pictures I have and say, “That is love.”
My first fear, then, in describing what love looks like in practical terms is that the pictures will be inadequate. I can’t possibly talk about all the manifestations of love, all the ways we can love God and all the ways God can love us. I can’t reflect on every possible way to love our neighbor or care for ourselves. As a result, the pictures I want to share over the next weeks will be incomplete and from a single, biased lens.
My second fear is that a reader will mistake what I write as some formula for accomplishing love in their lives. Too many books claim to have the answers to living the Christian life. Just do these 10 simple things and you can claim peace in your life. Or follow these seven rules to a happier life. I don’t want anyone to mistake the list of pictures I want to paint about love as some list that will guarantee them a more loving life.
I’m hoping the pictures will give us clues as to what a more loving life will look like, but they are only clues that hopefully will lead to more clues, that will lead to still more clues. Learning to love in the holistic way that Jesus describes in the New Testament is realistically impossible. Such love would require a complete integration of heart, soul, mind, and strength with God. Yet, I do believe it’s possible for all of us to move in that direction by examining what love looks like in practical terms and applying those things to our lives.
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