Chasing After Me

It’s dark.

It disappears. But reappears.

It’s elusive.

It haunts us.

We swing and we can’t hit it.

We run and we can’t shake it.

And then we realize this shadow belongs to us.

It reminds us of our fears.

It is the knowledge of our inadequacies.

It hides our secrets.

It carries sadness, hurt, insecurity, anger, and regret.

It’s there because of us, but it’s not connected to us.

It resembles us, but it’s distorted.

It darkens our smiles.

It diminishes our emotions.

It masks our uniqueness.

It’s void of the color in our lives.

We all have shadows.

Shadows aren’t bad. Shadows are reminders that we exist…just like everyone else. Shadows are reminders that we all carry crap.

All. Of. Us.

Shadows remind us of our humanity. Everyone has a shadow.

In fact, light creates shadows that remind us that we’re all real people, with real stuff.

But…

Light is what shows the way.

Light shows us who we are.

Light helps us find each other.

We don’t need to swing at it. We don’t need to run from it. We simply accept that we all have one.

And then we get to remind each other of the beauty of our smiles, the tenderness of our tears, and the color in our lives that makes us unique.

(If you missed the post earlier this week about our culture’s need for community, click here)

Follow me here…

If God = Love, and if Jesus = God, then following Jesus = Following Love

Right?

And love, by definition, is FOR someone else.

Ekklesia, the Greek word for The Church (as referenced in the New Testament of the Bible), means the assembly of the called (those who have responded to the call of God’s immense, all-encompassing, unbelievable, overwhelming, grace-filled, forgiveness-filled love…not a technical definition, but my interpretation of the love from God I’ve felt in my own life).

Shouldn’t, then, that assembly of those following Love Himself be filled with love for one another? No matter who they are? Without judgment? We read in the book of John that Jesus came to love the world, not judge it. And, if we – the assembly of the called, also known as the church – love others as Christ has loved us, then shouldn’t we have created a gathering of people filled with love for each other? A place of transparency and acceptance? A gathering of people that people long to be a part of? Instead of a gathering of people that others work hard to avoid for fear of being ostracized?

Church has become something we do, a place we go, a notch in our pride belts…instead of who we are. We talk about church more in terms of how it fits into our lives and how great we think it makes us, instead of an environment of unconditional love.

Theologian Andrew Kirk says it beautifully: What the New Testament means by the Church is not an institution which owns property, performs rites and organizes meetings, or even one that plans strategies to evangelize unreached people. Rather, it is a group of ordinary people who, because they are experiencing the immense grace of a compassionate God, are learning how to overcome hostility between people, forgive and trust one another, share what they have and encourage one another in wholesome and joyous relationships.

If love is our mission, than community follows. We can’t have one without the other.

As Christians, our unity comes from that big, sappy, mushy gift of unconditional love that we’ve all chosen to accept. It’s grace.

Our unity does not come from how we do church, or what we look like.

Grace, Himself, is our great uniter.

Who cares if people worship God differently? Who cares if we all have questions about God? Why do we argue about sin if God only sees His children as He sees his own perfect son (Jesus)? Who cares what gender, ethnicity, culture, or lifestyle brings to the table.

God is bigger than all of that. And if God = love, then love is bigger than all of that, too.

And, the moment we think we have God figured out…turned into a process, program, or a textbook…is the moment we need to realize we’ve missed the enormity of His being…we’ve missed the point.

Can’t we embrace our differences and all chase after love together? Realizing that we all bring something valuable and beautiful to the table?

God is love. God loves us. As followers of Jesus, we have chosen to accept God’s love for us. God’s love is so big that it cannot be contained in one human body.

Love overflows.

Love gives.

Love is about relationships, not rules.

Love creates community.

The church should not be an inwardly-focused exclusive club.

The church (followers of Christ, Himself) should be home to a giant party, a party where everyone is invited, a party where everyone feels loved, a party that deepens relationships and friendships, a party where people realize that the one thing that unites is bigger than all of the things that make us different.

Americans are hungry for real relationships and we, the church, should be standing at the ready, without judgment, to be curious and compassionate reminders of the bigness of Love, himself.

The church can and should be heaven on earth.

Community is a buzzword right now.

Everyone wants to create their own…from President Obama’s campaign for re-election…to Starbucks…to Pinterest…to Target…to the local mechanic.

Companies like Facebook are capitalizing on people’s hunger for community.

Why?

I believe it’s because we were created for relationship.

I believe it’s because we were created to love and be loved.

And, sadly, I think our culture has forgotten about our natural wiring as human beings…we were never meant to be alone.

Instead of discovering the exponential beauty that we can create collaboratively by letting our lives weave together, we’ve created an empire of self. And in an environment where we glamorize and reward independence, we’ve, consequently, created loneliness.

Pride and loneliness. Now, there’s a combination…certainly not the definition of heaven on earth.

No wonder the world is hungry for true community again. No wonder organizations are spending millions of dollars to create it.

I prided myself on being independent for 30 years. Every single report card as a child lauded my independence. I became so stubborn about doing everything myself that I would avoid things I couldn’t do on my own because I didn’t want to ask anyone for help. And, then, I felt alone. When you feel alone, you realize how weak you are, you dissect your inabilities, and you dwell on your insecurities.

Sounds healthy and fun, eh?!

No wonder we Americans have a problem. No wonder people are committing suicide. No wonder there are eating disorders. No wonder bullying is a problem. No wonder mental illnesses have sky-rocketed. No wonder people are suffering physically, mentally, and emotionally. No wonder people are hurting.

No wonder even giant companies and organizations are trying to address the problem.

Mother Teresa said it wisely: “The worst disease in today’s world is not leprosy or cancer: it is the feeling of being uncared for, unwanted, of being deserted and alone.”

I know today that I was never really independent. I only pretended I was…pretended to myself, and pretended to the world. Being independent put me in control. Being independent helped me avoid putting burdens on anyone else. Being independent protected my feelings.

Independence from people is not a breeding ground for love.

Pretending to be independent kept me from being me. It kept me from letting others help me see things in myself I didn’t know were there. It kept me from the full manifestation of love in my life.

I read a blog last week that said 44 percent of the letters in the New Testament of the Bible are about how we should get along with one another (only four percent were about “spiritual gifts”). In the same blog I read that the words “one another” are mentioned 59 times! As someone who has spent more than a decade in professional communications and messaging, I can tell you that mentioning something that many times means it’s REALLY important.

We cannot “one another” by ourselves!

Furthermore, we cannot love one another without looking beyond ourselves.

Community is the manifestation of love. You can’t have one without the other.

Loving others IS loving God. Where love is present, God is present. Love creates community. Where two or more are gathered, THERE GOD IS in the midst of us. Why? Because then LOVE is present.

Community is detrimental to our well-being.

Community spreads love.

Community spreads God’s love.

Community changes peoples’ lives.

Community is the church in action.

Our decision to follow Christ may be a personal one, but the manifestation of Him in our lives is not…it’s about people…community.

No we can’t all be best friends to everyone, then it would be fake…and we’d all be bad friends. But we can all show love, compassion and curiosity. We can all take time to learn about people. We can all connect people with others. We can ALL create community. Community isn’t something we sit around and wait to land in our laps. We were all charged with creating it when we were charged to LOVE.

If God has commissioned us all to love…love, by nature, forms an interdependent community.

We don’t need ad agencies, web firms and Fortune 500 companies to spend millions of dollars to create something already at our fingertips.

Bob Goff, the author of my favorite new book called Love Does, says it eloquently: “It seems that what God does most of the time when he has something to say is this…he doesn’t pass us messages, instead he passes us each other…We are the means, the method, the object and the delivery method.”

Let’s not get bogged down in the pride of independence or unravel in our loneliness. If we all stopped making life about ourselves and started loving where we’re capable of loving in our lives, community will be created…guaranteed…because that’s what love does.

(And, we’re not done on this topic yet…in a few days I’ll be sharing about the church’s role in creating community!)

“When love is a theory, it’s safe, it’s free of risk. But love in the brain changes nothing…Love is too beautiful a concept to keep locked up behind a forehead like a prisoner.”  

–Donald Miller in the forward of Love Does, by Bob Goff

 I’m love crazed.

People roll their eyes at me because of it. I think people assume I’m just too naïve to know better.

To set the record straight, I’ve seen crap. I know why love can be hard. I’ve seen the ugliness of humanity. I’ve experienced the ugliness of humanity. And, yes, I’ve even been ugly to humanity.

But crap isn’t an excuse to ignore love.

It’s not an excuse because I believe true life is love. I believe God is Love and God is the source of Life…so it’s logical for me to believe that Love is the source of Life.

I believe that life is only about love.

Nothing more.

Nothing less.

Yes, I believe it’s that simple.

“The greatest science in the world; in heaven and on earth; is love.” 

-Mother Teresa

Love isn’t static. Because then it’s not love. Love fills our souls and then moves beyond our own lives.

Love isn’t just a feeling or emotion.

Love is an action whose affects will change us forever…it evokes immense value, gratitude, humility, and a desire to give…give love.

Love is for our neighbors. It’s for our friends. It’s for the strangers we pass on the sidewalk.

Human beings are pre-wired for love. To be loved. To give love.

Life is about the one thing that can overflow from our souls, into the lives of others. Love breaks through walls of religion, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, culture, geography…everything. I believe it’s why the Gospel spread like wildfire in early days. It wasn’t about religion. It was about a simple message of radical love that profoundly changed peoples’ lives. They felt love, and couldn’t not give it away.

The only thing complicated about love is how we try to redefine it with ifs, buts, and rules…or when we assume love is only for ourselves. Even the dictionary defines the noun “love” as a profoundly tender, passionate affection for another person. Love is not about you being right, or showing others that you know best…there is no room for judgment in love. Love serves, love gives, is humble, patient, kind, trusts, and hopes.

That is our filter for what love is…a love that never becomes obsolete.

Sound like a tall order? I start by remembering that love is for me…and then works through me.

And then I assure myself that I’ll mess up, but that mess-ups don’t matter in love.

I’m human.

I’ll get in my own way.

I can’t single-handedly change the world.

I don’t have to perform love perfectly to be loved.

Because love isn’t conditional, or contingent upon what I do well or what I screw up. I can’t earn love. True love is a gift. Any other kind of love really isn’t love at all.

That’s how I am loved.

And, honestly, my low moments in life are those spent pitying myself, feeling like I need more for me. Love can never be fulfilled in those moments, because I’ve learned that those moments assume love stops with me. But, the best moments in life are spent giving love away…words, smiles, meals, hugs…it comes in many forms. That kind of love not only changes the one who receives love, but also the one who gives it.

Love is not a commodity. Love is my theology. Love is a mission. Love is our very being.

Let love continue among you. Let it be the air you take in, that uncurls within you, and extends between you. -Hebrews 13:1, The Voice

She was about six-years-old and wearing red shorts with a short-sleeved white shirt…the front of her shirt was covered a rainbow bursting out of a giant heart.

I think the shirt was quite telling.

It was like her heart was exploding with all the things that rainbows are to little girls…beauty, hope, promise, mystery…and let’s not forget that pot of gold.

That little girl had a big heart, was filled with ideas, and only knew her passions.

As she aged, the same heart and same rainbow were there. But the beauty, hope, promise and mystery exploding from her heart seemed a bit impractical, less relevant, and definitely naïve. Somehow it all seemed a bit clouded…and, strangely, even further away now that she should have been closer.

It was as if, year-after-year, little-by-little, the bigness of the rainbow was being stuffed back into her heart. Still present, but hidden from plain sight.

The thing about the bigness of a bursting rainbow is: it’s hard to stuff. She couldn’t stop thinking about it. Ever. She couldn’t really keep it hidden from others. Curious and observant people could still see it.

But to the six-year-old little girl present in the body of the now 30-something, what she now knew to be beautiful, hope-filled, promise-filled, and intriguingly mysterious, overwhelmed her.

It was all she could think about, but nothing she could let herself do.

Paralysis.

It wasn’t fear of failure. It wasn’t fear of judgment.

It was a question: could what is held in the idealistic heart of a six-year-old really be for life today?

One thing was for sure, all that was longing to explode once again wasn’t anything distance, impracticality, relevance or naïveté could take away.

It’s as if someone intentionally plants desires in young hearts with purpose – so that by the time brains are developed enough to talk the heart out of something, it’s already too deeply ingrained.

There is purity in purpose that comes from this place…I would know, I’m dying to find that shirt once again.