We long to have someone intimately close, one to reveal ourselves too, to know us as to be known. BUT, we love our aloneness, we only allow others so close, because we want to be hidden, we want to have our space, we love to have our time alone, we love to be alone. We guard ourselves from open love of another by chasing a dream of what we want them to be, and when the dream is shattered we cry foul. What happens when someone is willing to be close and love, what do we do? We run, we hide, and we hurt them to bring about separation, this separation is what we truly want, to be separated and be by ourselves. Augustine said, "Whatever is allowed, we do not want, but that which is not permitted us, we burn all the more fiercely to posses it. Whatever follows me, I flee; but whatever flees me, I pursue." How we run on the treadmill of misery, we pursue what we cannot catch, and we run from being caught. Oh, how want love without risk, but how can one love another without risking?
Jesus didn’t call us to love others as we love ourselves, to set limits on our love, but to love without limiting. Our problem isn’t we love too much, but we love to little. We love others on our terms. We love others at a distance; we restrain our love for others but desire others to love us without risk. Have you ever though how life would be if you loved others without concerning yourself with the risk? Not living a life of fear that says,”If I love someone, what will happen to me?” If we say we love someone and we are only concerned about what will happen to us, then we need to ask ourselves do we really love them, or do just love the way they make us feel. If we truly love someone without risk we tend not to concern ourselves about only ourselves. We look to the desires of those we love. When I use the words without risk, I mean to love without worry, without fear, without concerning ourselves about what will happen if I give my love to another. Think to yourself and see if there was ever a time when you gave yourself to a friend. When you didn’t look to your fears for their counsel on love? Was it a love that was rewarding instead of being laden by fear? Was it a love that was filling instead of being emptied out by the words, “what if?” Could it be that our pain from love is more about restraining ourselves because of what others have done to us? John Piper said, “It is not that we are all trying to please ourselves, but that we are all far too easily pleased. We do not believe Jesus when He says there is more blessedness, more joy, more lasting pleasure in a life of devoted to helping others than those in a life devoted to our material comfort.”
How would our love for others be if we didn’t live in the fear of losing it? When we desire to love others, and fear doing it because we might lose it; then we already have missed it if we choose to live that way. Once we fear and restrain our giving, we have nothing to lose because we have never possessed it. Christ said it is better to give then to receive. How would our relationships be if we gave our love to others without expecting something in return? For God loves a cheerful giver.
Now let us turn our attention to our love for God. Do we do the same to Him? Do we fear giving our hearts over to Him? When it comes to human relationships we know that those fears are possible, even though it should not control us, or make our decisions for us. With God we need not fear at all. He has promised He will never leave us or forsake us. The question we need to ask ourselves is why do we still run from God? Why are we afraid to put our trust in the One who has given all for us? What will happen if we love God with as much intensity as we want others to love us? How would our lives change if we would open our hearts up to Him and allow His love to transform us? I think we would be surprised with the change in our own hearts. Maybe if we would allow Him in, we may even allow others in also, but only if we try.
Mike Mason says, "For given this natural bent of ours towards isolationism, how vital it is for us to know, to come to terms with and to discover again and again the shattering truth that we indeed are not alone in the world! This is precisely the work of marriage, as it is of true religion; to remind, daily, that we are not alone. We are not alone when it comes to other people, and neither are we alone when it comes to God. However much we may wish at times to be left alone, it is not as option. It is one thing that God and marriage refuse to allow us. They will not simply let us be. In one way or another, they are always on our backs, forever admonishing us that there is no such thing apart from relationship, which is to say, no life apart from the sharing of ourselves with another."[i] It is true to say when we get hurt we want to be left alone in our pain. Oh, how the one we longed for now becomes our source for isolation. We hate the loneliness, but hate even more to be near others because it is too hard to give. A vicious cycle, we hate being alone, but at the same time we don't risk loving others because of the pain of rejection, and disappointment of being hurt by them. Then we also long to love and be loved, and ache for others, a cycle which puts us in discontentment with God. Oh, deep down He is the one we blame, He is the One who should fix our situations, but since we are discontented with Him, we push His and His love away. Keeping us in the cycle of longing, and leaving, a cycle that keeps us in a perpetual isolation from what we need the most, the love of God and the love of others.
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