Love can be a deep well… or a shallow grave. Love is a strange thing. Love can take us places that we wish to never leave. And then love can take us to a place that we wish we had never seen, experienced or walked through. Love can be beautiful. Love can be overwhelming. Love can be satisfying. Love can be deceitful. Love can fill us up or it can empty us out. Either way, love always involves people. One, two or many.
Some people just are not easy to love… it is work! And hard work at that. They do not want to be loved or let love in. No matter how genuine, the number of attempts made, or the persistence, still they resist and reject. There is a barrier too hard, too cold, and too unbreakable. Love cannot enter in. This love is a shallow grave for the one closed up and the one trying to enter in. Do not lose yourself in the painful pursuit. Love will never be welcomed in.
Some although hard, there is just something that pulls you to them. In their strategy to keep love out they just build a wall, but in the attempt to quickly block out anything and everything that ‘feels’, a pinhole in the brick and mortar is left vulnerable and love shines through. The heart gets penetrated no matter the resistance and love’s light begins to grow something beautiful. There is Hope and a glimmer of life that ever increases as love filters in. Love becomes welcomed in. This love becomes like a vine that finds the pinhole entrance into the wall and breaks the strength of the mortar and brick by brick, the wall begins to crack and crumble. This love becomes a deep well for all involveand it is a beautiful thing.
Then there are people that love just seems to find them wherever they are. They are joyous and full of life. They can always find good in every single day, even in the hard and broken places. Love flows from them and we are not the same, just from being in their presence. This love is a deep well and they long to spill over. Their love flows to fill the deep wells around them and flood the shallow graves, no matter the unwanted gift of love.
Love changes who we are and shows us who we can be. The only way that true, genuine love can ever exist is by One. John 3:16 tells us, “For God so loved the world, that He gave His Only Begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” Our love apart from Christ will always be tainted, temporal, conditional, circumstantial and sensual. Until the love of Jesus abides – takes up permanent residence – in our heart, we will only know the expression of a love based on what our environment and society around us defines it to be. The love of Jesus Christ is sacrificial, given to death and resurrection, offering eternal life and enduring love to all that believe. He is our Savior and He is Love. Jesus Christ, embodied by love untainted, giving His life because His Love for our very soul is the genuine deep well never-ending. What love! What a Savior!
I remember the night that I opened up my heart to let Jesus in. I was so in need of my Savior. All around me and in me was broken and tainted and dark. To learn that He knew me, all about me and yet, He loved me. Regardless of all that was broken and busted, He wanted me. I could not understand that kind of love. I just knew that I wanted to be embraced by it. I remember the release. This overwhelming pressure that dissipated, as if my chest had opened up to let my heart explode, to be alive and to be loved. I remember the Peace that flooded in. Everything around me appeared different. Love had come in and my eyes were open and seeing for the first time. Although, life’s circumstances were still the same. I learned to forgive that day… forgiveness given to others that had hurt me, forsaken me and left me broken. Just so you know, forgiving myself has taken years… bite-size pieces of grace given to myself. I still have heart crevices that love longs to open and release, allowing grace to come in like a flood, uproot, wash and heal. Years of brokenness and self-destruction takes time and energy to revisit, the confrontation is painful. Love will open me up and love will take me there. The deep well will draw it out and use it for His Glory and a greater purpose than I can see. Oh, His love is so worth knowing!
Seek to be found by Him. Embrace His love. Seek to be that ‘deep well.’ Pour out love and be a deep well for others. Surround yourself with ‘deep wells.’ Be filled by the love that follows and flows from them. And lastly, know when love is refused. Leave the shallow grave behind and do not be consumed. Some people are just not yours to pour into. Hard lesson, I know, but so true. And remember, life and love await…
