I appreciate this chapter as it gets us looking forward, where are we headed? In the world of feelings that can go wrong, what does it look like for the redeemed version of this to shine through?
The book takes a look at love with a bit of a definition: will-to-good. We love others when we promote their good and not only wish them well but offer our support to move them along in that direction. They compare real love to that of desire noting our frequent mix of those two definitions. But love is not the same as desire. I desire pizza, I do not wish it well I only really want to consume it. Thus, the difference between lust (mere desire) and love. So, our culture has a heart-sick inability to differentiate between a love that promotes the good of another and a desire which simply consumes someone for their own good.
In the same vein friendships can fall prey to this same type of scenario. If I have a deep longing to erase a sense of loneliness I have in me, then I end up using a friend to try and erase that only to find out it still lingers even in the best of friendships. Loneliness is a longing for the kind of belonging that only God could provide for us. Instead of discovering that through Him, we use others to erase something deep down inside of us. Often it will cost a person that friendship only to make the whole larger for the next friend to try and fill and round and round it will go.
When a love-filled relationship exists between us, and God pride and fear will no longer rule our hearts. When God’s kind of love exists inside of us then fear and pride can be cast aside, and genuine relationships rooted in the exchange of God’s infinite love begins to free us to look to the interest of others.
The world views us as consumers. People who live in a mode of bringing things into us, the seagulls that relentlessly say “Mine” on Finding Nemo. But God so loved the world that he gave. Instead of using us for himself he gives out from himself to us. Resources flow out from Him. This is the end goal of our lives, to make the exchange from a consumer to a giver. By God’s grace, may it be so!!
Truth, Grace, and Time 