Nobody tells you how hard it will be to love someone. Most of us have such a flimsy idea of what love means.
You have no idea at the outset of this adventure that this relationship may cost you your life.
The culture has taught us to grab what we need, to get our part, to take care of ourselves. The culture worships at the altar of ‘me’ time.
But Christ shows another way.
When our house burned down before Christmas in 2010, Steve and I woke up to a house filled with smoke, with flames shooting out the dining room window.
He didn’t hesitate. He crawled through the burning house and unlocked the front door and made a way for our kids to escape.
He didn’t count the cost.
And as he lay gasping on the front steps, heaving for breath, all he could think about was the kids.
When our sweet Caiti brought them downstairs to safety, she looked like an angel. We all survived by the mercy of God.
But for months, I was tortured by the sounds of love—the wheezing, the coughing, the scars that may never heal. The smell of smoke always lingers in the air. He used a steroid inhaler for the longest time but I’m not sure his lungs will ever be the same.
Every time he coughs, I’m jarred awake to what it means to really love another.
Love that will enter a burning room, not knowing the outcome. Love that will lay down its life. Love that will go to work, day in and day out, despite the stress and drudgery and the thanklessness.
Love that sets His face like a flint and won’t stop until mankind is ransomed. Love that goes to a cross, to die, for the sins of the world.
Real love can’t be summed up in chocolate and cards and flowers.
Real love is dirty, smoke-stained, bloody, left for dead.
But the Father of all mercy will raise the dead man, will give him breath and life, and will in His resurrection, raise us too.
Love will have the last word.
Love will never fail.
“Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God.”
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