I am Yours and that's enough

I have a question, and I doubt you have the answer. I know that I do not.

When did love stop being enough?

Was it at the beginning when Eve leaned forward and listened to the snake’s advice, plucking the forbidden fruit that would send us spiraling into a broken world ruled by selfish motives and desires? I’m not sure, but when I look around me my heart breaks. We think it is acceptable to qualify love with statements like,

“I love you, but…”,

“You’re beautiful, but…”,

“I trust you, but…”

And with that one small word “but” we demean the prior statement. It all becomes about conditions. We qualify people by our own legalistic standards rather than by who they actually are and so place all of humanity into a box making it so easy to leave love out.

Walk, talk, act, dress a certain way and you are fine, but deviate slightly from the acceptable norm and that pesky word jumps in.

BUT

“I love you, but I don’t think you should do this or that and so my love is contingent upon your actions.”

“You’re beautiful, but, I find this particular part of you shameful and so your beauty is truly dependent upon what you do with what I say.”

“I trust you, but I do not believe you will make the decisions I want you to make. My trust relies on your following my ways.”

No wonder unconditional love is so difficult for us to fathom. With such overwhelming subtext hidden behind a word we use so often, of course we believe it is our actions rather than our existence that call us loved.

And then Jesus comes into the picture. A man who saw the brokenness of the world and was not content to stay in Heaven and watch. Rather than causing us to feel shame at who and what we are He left glory and came to earth. He reached out and touched us in our brokenness, making us feel that we were truly loved. Not because of anything we had done (or neglected to do) but because we existed. He took out the qualifying words and said that he loved us. He truly loved us. Believe in that and everything else falls into place.

Love is enough.

Why can we not do the same?

Yes, there are things we need to stand against and stand up for and we should not shy away from that, but in the end we need to separate the people and love them. If we are the hands and feet of our beautiful savior then people should feel more alive in our presence, right? More loved. More accepted. Not ashamed, confused and leave more broken and lost than when they arrived, but loved. Truly and wholly and we need to firmly believe that everything else, the flaws, the scars, the things that make us want to cry out in anger are the things that Christ alone can fix.

What can we do? We cry out to him because we cannot begin to mend our own brokenness.

I cannot tell you when love stopped being enough, but I can say that the time came long ago for it to be all that we see. I fall victim to the norm every day, but it is the fervent prayer of my heart that God will seep out of every crack in my mangled heart, reaching into the brokenness and boldly calling His children loved…especially when I do not see. Especially when it is the most difficult thing in the world for me to do.

Trusting that love is truly enough.

That it has always been enough, and that it always will be.