Love's pains

Many are those moments when the heart is tired of loving... and when giving feels like the most hurtful thing in the world... because you make yourself vulnerable to another's tendency to take you for granted. Sometimes, unconsciously. And if you happen to be one of those melancholic, over-analysing, self-doubting people like me, it is possible to assume wrongly that someone took you for granted. (Happens all the time!)

But God... He has never stopped loving me or showing me grace even when I grieved His Father heart. I know that I am not God - and I will never be - but I aspire to be like Him.

To be loved is something - but to love and to have conquered love's pains enriches the soul somehow. For me, it brings me to see the cross of Christ in a different light. Or rather, it highlights a truth as old as time: He hung there not just because He had to, but also because He wanted to.

God gave us His Son not just because He had to - but also because He wanted to. (He wanted the creation of man in the first place - despite the great risk that man would betray Him, and he did.) And that sounds like crazy to me - but it wasn't about crazy. It was... and it is about His unfailing love that fruited man's creation, envisioned his redemption and adoption in Christ ... and now extends beyond the cross into God's eternity.
 
A little cliche - but indeed, love is an act of the will. It is a choice.

God, help me choose to love.

When I feel taken for granted, help me to cherish the reward of knowing that I have loved and given like You do... that I have sown willingly into the person's life the treasures of time, energy and resources which the selfish miser in me would have rather hoarded.

When I taste the bitter from what was meant to be sweet, sweeten my spirit with Your peace that I may still give thanks and persevere in love's chores.

When I groan under the burdens I must bear for the sake of love, burden yet me with the awe of how Christ gave me life in exchange for a sin's scourge - the greatest kind of burden man would have to bear. Let me remember that the burden carried as a child of Light is far lighter than that of a child who gropes about in the darkness.

Amen.