Everything outside is soaked with green and rain. The breeze is sifting through the window as I spend moments alone. A friend is in labor with her first child. So many I know are getting engaged, married, watching their perfect love story unfold. Others are off to the farthest lands, exploring this planet we all call home.
I, on the other hand, stand in the corner watching, eyes wide, heart beating, wondering what I'm doing wrong. I blame myself for where I am in life. It's probably a failure on my part to seek God's heart deeply enough. Or maybe I'm waiting for an answer when He's just telling me to take the plunge and go. What do I do? What don't I do?
In the meantime, I often wonder what it means to really walk in love. I Corinthians 13 tells me I have miles and miles to go before I love even close to flawlessly...scratch that, I never will.
"Love is patient..." I snapped at a coworker today.
"Love is kind..." I made a thoughtless joke that could have hurt someone.
"Love does not envy..." Hold up.
Does that mean that by comparing my life to someone else's, I'm actually not loving them? Or perhaps even hating them by default? Or, worse, hating myself? If I cannot love myself, I cannot love another...or God.
"The second is this: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no commandment greater than these." -Mark 12:31
"We love because he first loved us. Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen." - I John 4:19-20
I don't know. I got tired of Sunday school answers a long time ago. Genuine love is hard to come by these days, and even harder to come by is religion that is pure and undefiled before God: "to visit the orphans and widows in distress [thus] keeping oneself unspotted by the world." - James 1:27
This place in my life is somehow where God wants me. I'll look back and be thankful for this odd, dry wilderness, and also be thankful for the little oases he takes me to in the midst of it.
