Deserving Love

Deserving Love...

This is something I have been giving a lot of thought to in the last several days. Do we deserve to have someone love us? To care?

Think about it.

Love encompasses so many things. The Bible says that "Love is PATIENT...KIND...DOES NOT BOAST...BEARS ALL THING...BELIEVES ALL THINGS...HOPES ALL THINGS.." That is quite a lot for this little four letter word to do.

People throw the word around. I am guilty of it. But the word itself isn't the thing, it is the defintion of it.

People can define the word in many different ways. Some feel that love is that emotion that ties your stomach up in knots and your heart skips a beat. That, I think, may be a kind of love. A simple love. A beginning maybe. But to call it love, shouldn't it have more to it.

Other people see it as something that hurts you. If someone says "I love you" they only want something from you. Love to these people is very real but it is the kind of real that is only known to be real by the kind of pain it causes. But this can't be love, can it?

Still others, myself included, believe that love is more than these things. Love is something that is hard to define. Love is something that is more than just a feeling, because feelings come and go. Love is a secure, lasting, trusting, understanding, warm, precious and rare place to find yourself. I say it is a place because it is IN that LOVE that you can be and have no fear, no sadness and know peace.

All of that being said, if love is as the latter of these things then who has it...or better yet, who deserves that love?

Many people say they love eachother. Friends. Family. Do the people that they love deserve the love that they are receiving? I say no. Love is a gift. You don't earn a gift. You accept it.

Consider it this way, for those of you who have children, what did they do to deserve the love you have given them? What accomplishment did they have to make them worthy? What skill made them desirable? What did they do?

Nothing right? You love them because they are yours. You look at them and they are so precious and things that you cannot describe happen inside your heart and your head and you know you would do anything in the world for them.

Ok, what about your friends? Your best friend? Your friend became your best friend over time. You have disagreed about things, maybe even fought, but they are their for you. One or both of you have done something at one time or another that has hurt the other, did they deserve your forgiveness? Do they deserve your love?

No, they don't, but what would you be without them? Would your life be as bright? Would your heart be as full? Could you laugh as hard or as much?

Well, one more step further. What have any of us done to deserve God's love? Have we been so good that He has to love us? Have we been so obedient that He can't help but give us His love?

Nope again! He knew we would fall. We would be broken. We would go our own way. Yet He sent his precious Son to be like us, to know us, to walk with us, be humiliated for us and then die for us. God did all of this just so that we, the broken, the dirty, the unworthy, could be with Him.

WOW!

We don't deserve ANYONE'S love, much less God's.

Be grateful when someone gives it to you. It is a gift. It is not a gift to return but to give away. That is the only way to keep love and the only way to multiply love.