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Devotional – A universal need for love




Brian Jarrett

Brian Jarrett

The universal need of the human heart is to be loved. The aching realization for most is that they are not loved, at least to the degree they want to be.

Love is powerful, compelling, and affirming. The giddy gaze of newlyweds is priceless. The tender love of a mother for her newborn is legendary. The shared experiences of lifelong friends are a treasure. The elevation to hero status to a father from his young son is humbling.

Very few reach the end of life reporting super-satisfaction in all the relationships of life. Who could say ‘my parents loved me perfectly, my siblings supported me selflessly, my spouse always supplied my needs, my children cherished me unconditionally, and every friend was faithful’?

More often than not we traipse through life with a ‘love-hunger’. Our innermost self yearns to be loved either more, or by more people. Betrayals burden us, and sleights sting deeply. It might surprise us how many have a gnawing desperation to simply be loved for who they are.

We can reason that God loved us a newborn. Did the new wear off when we reached the bratty grade school years and trying teens? Can God still love the questioning and headstrong young adult? We accumulate so many scars, some from our own making.

It hurts to admit, but some of us aren’t naturally lovable; at least not all the time. Past hurts have caused us to put the quills out like a porcupine, and when someone tries to get close, we stick them for fear of getting wounded again. Layers of guilt choke out our capacity to love and be loved in return. We carry baggage from things like neglect, abandonment, conflict, divorce, and shunning.

Many have adolescent insecurities as an unwelcome holdover all the way through our adult years. Our ‘love disconnect’ prompts us to point an uneasy finger at the most innocent of all – God.

In our minds, love means comfort and ease. Love entails pleasing and being pleased effortlessly. It is affirmation and appreciation, intimacy and invincibility.

A window of insight is opened by the author of love. His own experiences cast love in a slightly different and mature light. His perfect and compelling love culminating with the creation of a couple in His own image led to a fruit-crunching fiasco in the Garden of Eden. Betrayal and bloodshed followed. Lust became a cheap substitute for love. Through the course of history, God the perfect love-r has patiently endured man’s imperfect response to His gracious overtures.

God models for us the need of the hour — to love even when it is not reciprocated. Jesus could bless when He was blasphemed, to sacrifice when He was slandered. To do good when only evil was shown in return. He has given an enduring landmark for those who feel jaded, unappreciated, defeated and depleted. It is a symbol seen today with the eye of faith. An old tree stripped of its bark with a splintery crossbeam connected to it. It is bathed in blood and smells of death. This outdoor torture chamber is the depository of all the hate, rage, injustice, and vice men have released since the dawn of time. One man was willing and able to climb on that cross and receive in His body the shame, indignity, and wrath of the world.

Look closely and you see your own sins there. You reluctantly realize that at least once you responded to love with indifference if not hate. That another has felt the icy isolation that you either accidentally or purposefully foisted upon them. Your heart is melted at the wonder of One who patiently endured the scorn.

Maybe for the first you see that love wins. A love never lived out perfectly in this life, either by us or to us. But a transcendent love that comes in a never-ending stream from heaven to the doorstep of your heart. The one thing better than having all of my family and friends love me in a comprehensive way is to have the God of the universe to love me in sacrificial one.

I cling to the love that more than compensates for anything the world can throw at me. And console myself with the knowledge that this love will never disappoint or die. When I make the transition to real life, I will be immersed in the wonder of an existence where pure love is the only reality forever and ever.

Brian Jarrett is the pastor of Hartville Pike Church of Christ.

 

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