“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell." C. S. Lewis from "The Four Loves"
This remains a mystery how the very thing that can bring us such great joy can also be the very thing that brings us such great sorrow at times. By nature we are filled with so much need love, needing to be loved. From the time we are born we need to feel the love of our mother’s arms to feed, to protect, and to feel secure; that need to feel loved continues throughout our life. Beyond that we are filled with the desire to give love; yet, so often that gift love requires such sacrifice and pain. To love someone or something, we become vulnerable to feeling their pain whenever they are hurt, we become vulnerable to the pain of loss when they leave us either in death or because they walk away, and we become vulnerable to feeling our heart rip into a thousand pieces feeling absolute despair. Our knowledge and our understanding of this seems to be so fragmented and so limited. How was it that perfect love which is God cried as He looked over Jerusalem, weeping at their loss and rejection of the only means of their receiving His Love? How was it that perfect love should stand at the grave of Lazarus and weep because no one understood that He (Christ) was standing there with the greatest gift of all; yet, no one had the faith to understand He came to restore life eternal in His presence where no more sorrow would occur? How was it that Perfect Love would have to suffer torture, death on a cross, and for a moment in time be ripped into pieces as the Father and Holy Spirit turned away unable to look upon the sin of mankind which He willingly took upon Himself to pay their penalty that Justice and Righteousness might be fulfilled? How finite are our minds that we cannot comprehend the truth, that to truly love means we must die to ourselves and our desires that we might receive the fullness of God’s Love into our hearts; and only then, be able to overflow that Love to another!! In that death, pain and sorrow; we then can experience the fullness of Joy that comes from the Love of God which fills our hearts and the Joy of truly loving another (though finite and imperfect) until one day we stand before Christ and so deeply in Love with Him, fall before His feet overjoyed by His presence. Perhaps that is why Paul, in this great letter concerning love continues as follows.
1 Corinthians 13: (amp) 9 For our knowledge is fragmentary (incomplete and imperfect), and our prophecy (our teaching) is fragmentary (incomplete and imperfect).
10 But when the complete and perfect (total) comes, the incomplete and imperfect will vanish away (become antiquated, void, and superseded).
11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; now that I have become a man, I am done with childish ways and have put them aside.
When it comes to the matter of the mystery of love, I am still that child learning from her Heavenly Father. One day, I will understand; when I stand before Him. I do not understand why God would have loved me so much and still loves me so; yet, I am still being taught by Him. The pains, sorrows, and joys that are mine because of love here on earth are but a training process to help me to understand one day the full depth of His Perfect Love which He so desires to give to me. I am certain that my inability to fully comprehend His Love and to Love Him as I should may at times cause Him to weep. My moments of doubt at times cause Him great sorrow; yet, He patiently waits and gently continues to teach me–because He loves me that much.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrkJWB1XhbY
Amplified Bible (AMP)
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