Man: Hello dear, which kind of love would you prefer?
Lady: What are the options from which I could choose?
Man: A) A military kind of love that is not too glamorous, strict but rock steady, the kind that never goes away. B) An enchanted love that is beautiful, romantic, glamorous but could fade one day.
Lady: Can I have the both of them, I want it beautiful and romantic yet rock steady. I want it like the stars, beautiful and brilliant, yet always there.
Man: Aha!
Commentator:
We want a love that is good to us, we also want it to be always there – and good for us. The stars offers a picture of such, we see it in nature – a blessed constancy, it is this constancy in nature that allows us to build civilisation, we know gravity would always be 10meters per seconds square; it is on that confidence that we can board a flight – the assumption that numerous factors would remain constant.We plead for such in human nature – we want people to be lovely and to be always lovely – good for us. When we are in relationships, we seek for such beautiful constancy, akin to that of the stars. We want those close to us to remain lovely even when we are not. We plead for a military love. For all the passion of the Boko Haram men, their willingness to die for their cause we know that their love is unlike this – it is not for us, they say it is for God, alas their God is not for us. We seek for a God that is for us – for all of us, a military kind of love.
It is not that such love doesn’t exist, it does. In God, there is a love that is there for us, for all of us even when we are misbehaving, we call it the Grace of God – a beautiful constancy. The kind that is ravishing, glamorous and always there; the kind that rejoices over us even when we are just returning home full of the filth of our trespasses. Unlike Boko Haram, we know it would not behead us, it seeks to change us, to bring us to a nature. Such a love is alien to our world, it wasn’t always there. We can understand a love that is there for good people, but that for bad people, it is unbelievable, who would believe such, who would believe our report?
Beyond Redemption
Is love essentially redemptive?
Yes, for the one that needs redemption, love offers such and more. More, because there are those for whom redemption is no longer the need, there are those who must go on to perfection, and for those, love perfects. Love makes perfect because to be perfect is to be like God – the Father, it is to share His nature. Love perfects because it is the one thing that we cannot do without the Father because the real test that we have passed from death to life is to love. We could be men of wisdom and knowledge, men of fire and power, men of influence and skill, yet, it is only in being men of love that we can truly claim to be men of God.
Hence, beyond redemption is the perfection motive.
Love Works
To love, we first have to have it. That’s why the men of Boko Haram are to be pitied, the little human love in them have been lost to an anti-love doctrine, they have learned to loathe themselves and eventually, their neighbor. The perfection in love is seen in us being filled with God – the true aim of religion, the knowledge of God’s love gained by the indwelling power of God’s Spirit is what gives the power to love and it is that same indwelling that perfects – this fellowship with the Holy Spirit.
Love is to gain the capacities of God, it is to partake of the state of equilibrium that exists between the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit – to partake of that which exists in the triune flux of Divine Personalities. When two individuals in a marriage relationship come to love, they come to a state of equilibrium, they might not have started that way, one might have had it more than the other, but as they receive and share, receive and share – from God and from each other, they eventually come to equilibrium and from thence raise Godly seeds.To partake of this mystery is the ultimate aim of man, some actually seek for it in the stars, others would want to be stars to find it, some would want to at least wear the stars. But it is seen in the work of Him who made the stars, the one He does in our hearts, making us into His own kind of stars – beautiful constancies.
