The Absurdity of Love

The strange absurdity of love is one of those great amazing things in life. You can’t just live without love and at the same time wish it wasn’t so difficult.

Wouldn’t life just be simple if you loved someone and they simply loved you back? I’m not even just talking about romantic love. Sometimes you will be loving toward someone continual for as long as you know them but it may not stir them to respond in the same. Kind of like how parents love their children and their may not care about their parents, or vice-versa; much like the prodigal son. This son despised his father by asking for his inheritance and thus saying he didn’t care if he was dead or not, he just wanted his stuff and be off with it. Day after day you are longing for someone who doesn’t love you back. Is it a vanity that will just pass, love forgotten leaving the deepest sorrow of a lost love? Maybe it’s similar to loving someone who doesn’t even know you, but it’s not. This love I’m talking about is a despised love. Such love that causes groaning deep in your heart for someone who would spit in your face. Maybe that’s the adventure or what makes it great, even what makes it absurd, to love someone who doesn’t love you, possibly unaware of you, or maybe despise you. Is it worth it your most heartfelt efforts be shredded and returned in a paper bag in the chance that maybe, possibly, be accepted and kept as a prized possession? Does something have not more value if at greater risk it was given?

The shredded contents in the bag are just as valuable even though it has been rejected. In fact it may be those that tore it can never be rid of the stain that it leaves on their hands. They will remember that heartfelt love you gave but only some will return later like that man’s son. That father ran to and accepted his son immediately back with joy and celebrated without hesitation. That father wanted to shower him with all the love, gifts, and adoration that he had been missing while gone. Those that never return like this son will see when they come to rest what they could have had and what joy they could have made complete.

Maybe it’s not that love is difficult but that people are difficult. Responding is not so difficult but coming to the act of letting yourself respond is what is difficult. The decision gets blurred and murky by doubts and alternate desires or motives. To honestly and truly respond to true love with true love takes removing of barriers to give that response. Greater love have no man than this that he lay down his life for another. Jesus’ love was so that while we still despised him he let himself be killed in our place of judgment for our death penalty.

How heartbroken God is for us all. I had but a touch of his heart when a young girl shared her story of how she being rejected and devalued and labeled as worthless by others found that she had been loved all along. She works for Operation Christmas Child that gives out shoeboxes and the gospel to children worldwide and she said that 3 of 5 children that receive the shoeboxes accept Christ. As she spoke I began to cry and could not stop crying. Long after she stopped talking and the pastor was teaching I had to subdue the sobs that wished to come forth. How does he long for all that their hearts would be broken hearted for the wrongs they do and turn to come to him, like the son to his father, knowingly undeserving of the new life and blessings he wish to freely give. If only his love would not be despised and the sacrifice he made himself to pay for the punishment we so rightly deserve because of the wrong we do.

How absurd. Wouldn’t things be so simple if you loved someone and they simply loved you back, loving only those that love you? Perhaps the part that is worst of love is what makes it true, what makes it real, and what makes it deep, love being heartbreakingly and bitterly rejected. What love is there without sacrifice.