Love Capacity

Burrs
What is your capacity to love? I had to take a close look at my heart yesterday and dig around in there, to see if it had picked up any burrs along the way. What I noticed is that my capacity to love any one person is directly related to the amount of disappointment I have experienced in relationship with them. This means I do and don't love them, all at once! 

For instance, it is easy to love friends because they are loyal, fun to be with, have our best interests at heart, and in the most fantastical way, friends will challenge us with truth for our own well being. Love has flow in friendship. 

Switching gears with a grind, I had to look closely at the family variety of relationships. Ahh, dear reader, you felt it too, the jarring slowing to a stop. This is where I found the burrs attached randomly to my heart, because over time, they caught there, hooked me into certain ways of thinking, reacting, believing and ultimately, feeling. One of the burrs, as mentioned above, is disappointment. 

When you or I do not "behave" according to the plan of another, there can be score keeping, with a disappointment score card, and endless check marks of yup, there they go again, one more reason that my trust and ultimately, my love has proven to be misplaced.

True Love
Love, true love, gives even when it does't get anything in return and this morning, that lesson became most apparent. I want to love like Jesus loves and this means loving the person in front of me, exactly the way they are, without self interest, self promotion, or a need to be pleased by their behaviour: attached like an addendum to our relationship. 

That kind of love is other worldly, and leads me to this morsel of astounding truth 

We give thanks to God and the  Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, praying always for you. Since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus, and of the love which ye have to all the saints. For the hope which is laid up for you in heaven, whereof ye heard before in the word of the truth of the gospel (Colossians 1:3-5)

Hope laid up
Faith and love springs from hope laid up for me/you in heaven! 

Oh dear one, I do not have the capacity to love like Jesus on my own. It is humanly impossible, because of my all too sensitive burr accumulating heart. 

It is only when I seek Him, live and love like He does, after being in His presence, in prayer and in His Word, that love capacity grows! With it, my heart fills to overflowing, the burrs no longer have a grip, they dislodge, and drop one by one to the ground.

Can you imagine, hope is laid up in heaven for us?

Grab hold of this truth, grab hold of love: let go of disappointment and learn to love like the Master. This is possible, it has, been done before.