I Love You More

Little else does the world need more than love. Now, what is such a common need is so personally defined; but there is one characteristic of love that puts all speculation beyond doubt. Love must love more.

Have you ever been in one of those alluring, competitively good stoushes—where two in a partnership go head-to-head, toe-to-toe, in outdoing each other at giving? Even when it’s light-hearted it’s inspiring.

And, even if it’s done by the way we know it won’t be returned, provided our expectations are matched to suit, the relationship shall be the unreserved benefactor. That’s more than enough reason to work for.

Love Like There’s No Return

“Go after a life of love as if your life depended on it—because it does.”

~1 Corinthians 14:1a (Msg)

Love is a one-way ticket.

Ever looking forward, striving for what is ahead (Philippians 3:13), with no time to waste in looking behind, in finding awkward nuances of others’ lack, love finds itself bent headlong in the grip of a winning effort simply to give. It has no thought for what is being taken—it says, “Take! Please, take!”

Love only wants from God; the receipt of anything else in its thought path—that’s not from the hand of God—is like spam. Self-pity and envy cannot compete with grace and magnanimity.

Why does love live like this? Why does she throw caution to the wind?

The answer is simple: no risk, no return.

Where we do not love, we do not live. To not risk means selecting for deadness, and where God is absent, we—the people of the living—do not belong. Best love.

Life in the throes of love is a continuous flow forward, where grace abounds by the acceptance, for their core, of all persons irrespective of acts and omission. Nothing can be done to love to hurt it; not ultimately. Big call, yes, but one we are capable of.

Yes, love wins. Love goes on. Love never ends (1 Corinthians 13:8).

There’s Nothing Like Love Going Harder

There is an old saying so far as sporting performance is concerned: go hard or go home!

From a loving context, love is not interested in the home option. It must go harder. It must spend itself more than the other, not because it’s selfish, for loving selfishly is an oxymoron, but because it knows it has the blessing of God over it. Love goes harder because it knows it’s on the winning path.

When love goes hard to love all the more, everybody wins. When one person employs the loving method, and they cannot be hurt because love fills them so, they enable their world to see God in all his practical glory.

© 2011 S. J. Wickham.