WE STRUGGLE WITH THE SIMPLICITY OF LOVE ALL OUR LIVES. For love is surrender and love is a beginning, and none of us truly wants to give everything away continually. And yet, life—as a verb and not a noun—is abjectly missing without love.
Without love, no matter what we bring to the table, we’re nothing. We miss the point. We come prepared with our bargaining chips but clearly without the Powerball. Love is that powerball.
Being without love is like the Prosecution attending court with all the various witness statements, affidavits, items of evidence and statutory declarations—all neatly filed and in order, but without their primary identification to prove their role in bringing the case against the accused. The case falls flat before it even enters the courtroom. It’s a laughingstock.
And, still, this is the way we’ll often “arrive” in many situations in our lives; prepared logistically, but not emotionally or spiritually—the truth is not in tow and love is several towns away, thumbing a lift and striving to catch up.
This is not a hard luck story and it’s certainly not a criticism; it’s a challenge—we all need it because love doesn’t very often come naturally to us.
Love is a start—it’s the foundation and critical building block of all success. It has no pre-proposed desires and specific ideas, but it does want the very best for all. Love is intrinsically pure and entirely trustworthy; it is certainly full of peace and just about free of tension—besides the desire to integrate.
How many pious people activate their faith without love, and God’s discredited as a result? Faith without love is really not faith at all, but an impostor. Where there is love there is glory straight to God—the correct order of things as far as love and life is concerned. Love is the lynchpin of spiritual progress, for without it, only an awkward, confused and chaotic antipathy is possible.
And still, so many people get things right simply because they loved. Love is hence a miracle. It’s miraculous because people hardly expect to see it. When someone does something heroic it’s full of love because they’re seen to simply want the best, no matter the personal cost at the time.
Love is the beginning and the be-all-and-end-all of life—it is everything, for without it, there’s no purpose to anything. Love encapsulates people, problems, processes and precedence. Allowed to reign, it moulds things to their own creative and situational perfection. It is both the means to and the end of all things. Perfection that could not be known beforehand is attributed silently to love.
Love starts out faithfully and ends that way; it can afford to because it knows no fear. Why on earth would it fear? Love’s power exists on a totally other realm, heavens above the fear that constrains much of the world and reigns classically—albeit needlessly—over many of our hours.
Love hopes, for it sees nothing but perfection—but this perfection is totally open, optimistic and creative. It’s nothing like the closed “perfection” of legalism, which again, starts out without love and never returns for it—it foolishly ‘knows better.’
If we start today without love we start without the vital ingredient for life.
If we start today with love we have the means for everything else.
© 2010 S. J. Wickham.
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