Why hello there again! I made quite merry this Christmas and decided to take some time off. Quite disappointingly, I think this December themed knock of holiday will run into the next year. But given the choice between cracking down on my writing and being able to visit with family, I would have to choose visiting with family. Usually what happens when Christmas rolls around, my family goes into game-mode. We bust out all of our favorite games (Dixit and Balderdash), and this year we even ventured to learn some new ones (Flux and Munchkin). There was much fun to be had and food to be eaten. Time with my family soon turns into cherished memories of loving encounters. So I hope you'll excuse me for choosing a few days of family time over time crunching for my blog.
I do however want to finally get back down to business. So our day of Lovemas, this ugly, icy evening, is centered around the first half of 1 Corinthians 13:7. Love always protects, always trusts. Other versions (I usually gear towards the ESV) say “love bears all things, love believes all things”. To be honest, I like the “bears all things” translation a little better. Love that endures all things is what most people want when they go to sites like EHarmony or watch the latest romantic comedy. We all know the depth of our own failures and the frequency of our personal breakdowns, so we know that in reality, we need a love that will bear all of our various human failures. That is found in God first and foremost. But with God as our source, there is no reason why we can't also bring him glory by exercising a love that bears all things.
The advantage of walking in a love that bears all things is that your relationships will be a free place for mess-ups to happen without condemnation. To place unrealistic expectations on your relationships to live up to the perfection of fairy tales (Nicholas Sparks, I am looking at you) is to set them up for failure. We all need love because it gives us the opportunity to try, fail, and try again.
This is not to say that you still place someone that constantly betrays your trusts in an important place of trust again and again. Neither does it say that toxic relationships are important to keep maintained. We can see this clearly in the way that Joseph was planning to deal with what he had supposed to be infidelity in his and Mary's betrothal.
When Joseph found out that Mary was pregnant, "because he was a just man and unwilling to put her to shame" he had resolved to divorce her quietly. There was no quiet divorce, though. God had something else up his sleeve. But I imagine that if Joseph had been betrothed to a woman that actually had stepped out on him, he would have resolved to do the same. That is major integrity. That is also a massive step of love. If Mary had actually gotten pregnant by sleeping with another man, that would have been hugely embarrassing to Joseph! The fact that he decided to quietly do away with the issue speaks highly of his love that bears all thing as well as protects.
So if love does not always maintain bad relationships, why does it say that love always trusts? On first glance, that sounds quite foolish. There are people in this world that will do more than enough to loose our trust, and it is not wise to go back to them blindly. So this is one of the verses in the bible where it is in our best benefit to do some additional research, look at the context clues and put the puzzle pieces together.
The word used for trusts or believes is pisteuo. It means to believe or trust. So there is a major element of vulnerability by saying that we are going to love to the extent of believing all things. You will probably encounter many who will attempt to use you. I personally have experienced the situation of trusting someone and then realizing that they in fact were a person that I needed to rapidly distance myself from. The experience was not pleasant, tears were shed, and I was widely disappointed with the notion of church for a small period. But I do not wish that I had been more cynical in order to protect myself.
We are going to face trials and tribulation in this time. We will even face some simply for the fact that we follow Christ. Much of that, I'm sure will be solely because we are operating in love while the world has a different system. We go against the grain much like riding a bike down a road meant for trains. At times, it might bumpy and unforgiving, but in the end, it is better to love than to close off your heart for fears sake. Walling away your heart may feel safe, and in fact it may be. But our point of thriving is not in the safe and closed off areas. We were all made to dive into the hot, bright, arid areas of vulnerability. God is standing in the desert, beaconing us to the scary realms of the unknown. When we are obedient to bear all and trust all, the living waters that flow from us are unstoppable.
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