To love someone who is different and fundamentally so is the most character testing endeavour one can get into. The Resurrection or Easter story is one that I find extremely charming and honestly, seductive. We move from sinners to saints in an instant because a God believes in the good that isn't in us but can be.
I think about earthly relationships and connections in similar light. How that many things don't always make sense but the reality of their existence is undeniable. A father loving a troublesome child, a wife loving her adulterous husband unconditionally, a professional climber who risks his life for sports are few examples of how the love nature of God finds expression even in mortal men everyday.
For the one who loves unconditionally, it's hard to explain it to others who are outside your body because the conflict within you befuddles you yourself and quite frankly you're not sure how it will all play out just that you know you love and want something irrespective of how that thing or person responds to you. I'm referring to love in its purest form not self sabotaging practices. The heart wants what it wants irrespective of what the head knows. May our heart always choose to love and not to fear.
Think about God for a minute, all the things we've been told about him. The truths, the half truths and the outright lies. Depending on the proportions of the mix and how much of it all you've taken in, your relationship with God takes a dimension that sometimes tend to leave us confused. For the few that are fortunate to see and experience more truth about God than the lies, we gradually begin to reflect and allow that truth find expression and that's freedom. The truth that irrespective of what we do and where we are at, his love never departs and that we should do the same.
I want to be more like God. I want to find reasons to love, love myself and others. I want to recognise the things that stop me from living like God intends, the fears that stops me from accepting the truth about me and everyone else. That truth that affirms that we're sufficient and adequate and need nothing more than we already have even if it's just in seed form.
I'm not an idealist that believe people don't have issues including the ones they don't know they have. However I believe many of those issues take root in fear, fear in its many expressions. If I recognise the fear that I carry and also the ones in my neighbour, I can bypass the limitations and all that stop me from loving truly and deeply.
Hate isn't the opposite of love, fear is. And in the very nature of fear is the perpetual push it gives us to go against all the things that make sense and help us find peace and joy. Fear criticizes what should be celebrated. It ensnares and bring grief. Fear gets us caught up in the things we should escape and ignore the embrace we should covet.
This week, let go of the limiting fear and embrace God's plan. Respond to his love and reflect the same to many others. Love has no torment because it has no expectation of anything in return. How hard, but also how true.
The more we practise love and loving others the more our character gets refined and the more like God we become.
This is so timely for me. I found it stirring up that deep seated feeling in me,FEAR.
I will like to know more about the differences between self sabotaging habits and true love acts.
Yes,I keep asking myself daily how I keep repeating the same cycle of friends which to me seems manipulative and deceptive. I later realized I might have been responding from fear too.
I decided to respond with love even when they are undeserving. This has brought me peace and Joy.
Thank you so much for this article, Otunba.