Light Arising

I actually got to go on a date with my wife last night. Now I know that may not be blogworthy, but I had to write about a movie we went to see. We went to see "Fireproof" and anyone that is married or thinking about marriage needs to see this movie with your significant other. The message of the movie is simple but awesome. However, this post isn't about the movie's main message, it is about a statement that was made in the movie that the more I think about, the more profound it becomes. The main character in the movie is struggling with a failing marriage. His wife has all but signed the bottom line of the divorce papers and the young man is struggling very much. His father comes and talks to him and talks about "the love dare" where the young man is given an assignment to love his wife no matter what her responses to him are. He tries for a good period of time, but her persistent rejection wears him out. He is on the verge of giving up and is telling his dad how there is no way that he can love someone after being rejected over and over and over. As he is telling his father this, his father is slowly walking around. They are on some old church camp grounds walking, and as soon as the main character says this about persistent love even in rejection, his dad comes to a stop at the foot of a cross and there is a pause in the conversation. WOW!! Talk about a powerful message. But that is not the best of it. His father then tells the young man, "Son, you cannot give to her what you do not have." Now here is the crux (no pun intended) of the matter. The father in this movie is absolutely right. We cannot give an unconditional love that we do not have within us. A light went off within me when he said this because now I understand why there is pain and suffering and hurt and abuse and divorce and loss and all this other awful stuff: people don't have unconditional love within them. When we don't have unconditional love within us (which is true love, by the way) then our selfish desires overtake us and we hurt people. And if you boil down the TRUE meaning of love, then you could state with a hard and wincing truth that therefore people don't have love at all within them. This is where people really start getting mad. "How can you say I can't love my kids and wife? How can you say I don't love my family?" Well, one cannot UNCONDITIONALLY love them unless that same love resides within them and there is only ONE place where this unconditional love is found. More accurately, there is only one PERSON in which this love is found: Jesus Christ. I am not going to take 20 pages of blogging to explain and answer every question that would respond to this statement, but I am going to present this very simply. God (Jesus) IS love. Everything that He is and does IS love. If I do not know God, then therefore I do not know love. Let that sink in. If I do not KNOW God, then therefore I do not KNOW love. That is a very sobering statement. I spent a lot of time last night asking God to really seek me out inside to see if I really knew Him because my responses to people are often out of selfishness (self-righteousness especially) or convenience. This is NOT unconditional love. So I pray today that we all have a sit-down chat with God and just ask Him, "Do I really KNOW You? Do I have that love within me?" If not He is just jumping with joy to give it to you. He wants you to know Him and to know what real love is. And when that happens it starts spilling out to others and all of a sudden we start seeing heaven on earth. Come on, let's ask Him to show us the reality of His love. All of us want the world to be a better place. His love is the way to really see it happen.