The Cost of Love

I just got off the phone with someone that most would see as someone who is draining, always struggling - the type that when you see their name on caller ID you are not excited to say the least. I have to admit that my attitude was a little that way (OK a lot that way), but I decided to answer anyway.

By the end of the conversation I was ashamed that I had felt that way, because as I was talking I had a moment of clarity. I saw how our busyness and our general lack of love for people keeps us from really being able to enter in with the downcast of our society - the people Jesus implored for us to care for. I saw my own selfishness for what it was. Their calling me to tell me that they couldn't do what they had agreed to do I saw as more of a nuisance for my workload than really caring about their on-going crisis's.

As a follower of Jesus, I am not asked to fix people, carry their burdens in any other way than to carry them to the throne of Jesus and leave them there or to meet all their needs. But I am called to love them.

I think we often talk about love and we know that love is important for us to show the world around us about hope in Christ, but we don't get what loving is. I don't get it so often. We don't "get" that person or their problems are too much for us to listen to or handle and so we excuse ourselves from really engaging with them, let alone REALLY loving them.

But real love looks like loving that person even though I don't get them or not knowing what to do with their brokenness.

I think the root of the problem could be a lack of love, but maybe it really is more a lack of understanding the cost of love. Most Christians would assert that love is the answer and we need love, but practical application as we nit-pick, judge, gossip and are stubborn to understand others we prove that we don't understand what love really is and that it IS costly!

After all Jesus gave His life for the love of us. Did we really expect loving others to be easy? Good thing we have the Spirit to help us love. Incarnational love. Powerful.

I want to be the kind of person that chooses people over accomplishment. Especially in a culture that increasingly values productivity over people. My phone call was a moment where I almost made the wrong choice with my attitude. Thank you Jesus for using a moment to humble and teach me!