Tag Archives: Perspective

Love… Because It’s Valentine’s Day

Love.

What comes to mind when you hear that word?  Red roses and sparkly diamonds?  Silvery moonlight?  Hearts and glitter and flowers and hugs and kisses?

The thing that we picture when we talk about love is often something nice and pretty.  We like to imagine love as safe and canny, and enjoyable.  But it’s not.  Love isn’t safe.  What comes to mind when we picture “love” should not be touchy-feely.  We like to think that if love was visible it would be pink and lovely and comfortable.

But the reality of love is the cross.  Tears–pain–darkness–blood–sweat–grime–wood splinters in your skin.

God is love, and He loved us even when it meant abandoning His son to torture and death.  To love someone is not to be made happy by them.  It means choosing to hang on and never let go, and let them drag you through things you never wanted to experience and don’t know how to handle.  Loving people is painful.

But it’s worth it–so, so worth it.  It’s so, so beautiful.

Love is the ultimate clash of beautiful and ugly.  It is healing and life running to death and pain.  Loving is impossible on our own.  We could never be brave enough.  You can only truly love someone when you pray for God’s help, and fight to bring them closer to Him.

If Christmas Isn’t So Merry Anymore

The older you get, the less exciting Christmas becomes.  (My sincere apologies to all my readers who are younger than I am.)

You begin realize that it’s not necessarily the best time of year, it can be kind-of stressful, and there’s always that inevitable after-Christmas-let-down.

So when you get old enough to realize you shouldn’t center the season around presents and you’ll probably just be disappointed if you do, you were never crazy about the food or decorations, and you like the music but you can’t live off jingle bells–what next?

Well, you turn to what should have been our focus in the first place–Christ.

You don’t go to a birthday party just because you want the cake (I least I hope you don’t!), you go because you want to encourage whoever is having the birthday.

The last song on Rend Collective’s Christmas album is called “For All That You Have Done”.  Jesus has a birthday because He was born to be tortured to death.  He has done everything for us.  Given us everything.

The least we can do is celebrate His birthday for Him.