The lyrics in a song by Mae are haunting me.  The story in the song is set in the singer/writers struggle with sleeplessness and pain.  He journeys to the ocean with his guitar waiting for the sun to rise, waiting for an answer to his hurt, the conclusion to his song to flood his fingers and his mind.  He encounters a fisherman who takes him on a boat ride and tells him the answer in life is faith, hope and love and the greatest is love.  As the writer sits on the boat with his back to the fisherman, he screams out the words “IT’S SO HARD TO LOVE THE WAY THAT YOU WANT ME TO!”

Isn’t it so hard to love?  It is SO hard!  I am bound by my own insecurities in love, my own fears and desperate need to be loved.  I am dulled by a constant, sinful voice begging the question “what’s in it for me?”  I want equal love for equal investment.  I want to be acknowledged for what I have given.  My humanity craves recognition and thanks.  But that isn’t really love is it?  Sad to say that often my idea of love is completely self absorbed instead of selfless, me centered rather than others centered, loud and noisy, seeking attention, rather than quiet and serving, expecting nothing.  Like the apostle Paul, I find myself in a place where I am doing exactly what I don’t want to do, loving with expectations or conditions.  Paul asks a question in Romans 7 about who will rescue us from our body of death, our sinful nature.  The answer, he concludes with thanksgiving, is Jesus Christ.

I cannot love the way Jesus wants me too without him.  He is the answer to our desire to love rightly.  Jesus is the example of how we must pursue each other.  If I have learned anything from the gospels, if I have gained anything from the words passed on from those who walked with Jesus, it is that his love was, is, supernatural, inexplicable.  He is the source of an unending river of love flowing naturally, selflessly, beautifully.  He is the power that creates a love that asks “what can I do for you?” rather than “what’s in it for me?”  And that question, that desire to love, to help, never runs out in that supernatural realm.  That resource is constantly replenished, never poured out, never emptied, but always, incessantly flowing down from the One who ran to the cross out of love for us, for me.  That beautiful love that does not hold my selfishness against me or call to account my many blunders and wanderings, but floods into the cracks and crevices caused by those mistakes and makes me whole, always makes us whole! 

I want to live in THAT love.  My heart aches as I assess my many shortcomings in loving well.  I want to love unselfishly.  I need to love freely and without expectations.  I need to let the love of Jesus squelch the insecurities that cause me to fear losing those I love, to fear that they will stop loving me.  If I live in supernatural love, that love casts out all fear.  It’s so hard to love.  True, it is when I want to control love or I want to try to love under my own power.  In reality, I am very weak like Paul who hears from Jesus in 2 Corinthians 12 that when we are weak Jesus is strong.  Our weakness creates an opportunity for us to brag about our need for Jesus, our dependence on him and him alone as our strength.

I think, at least in my own life, this needs to become a daily, perhaps moment to moment prayer.  I get caught up in a false belief that I love well and it happens because I take control, I want to be the drive behind that love.  I am deceived when I try to love that way.  My prayer today is this: Lord have your way in me, have my heart and soul, love through me with a supernatural love.  Wipe away the fears and insecurities that stop me from depending on you and you alone.  You are the source of all good things.  You are love.  Living in you, may I learn to sing a lyric that screams “BECAUSE OF YOU, IT’S SO EASY TO LOVE!”