Notes on Love

I am taking a class this quarter called "Faith and Literature."  If you know me at all, you would know that there is no way that I would actually choose to take a literature class, but I ended up in this one because I couldn't get into any of the other classes I wanted to take.  My backup class was filled and so was my backup backup class, so I was left with no choice other than taking this class which I was told was interesting.  I have not regretted taking this class for one second.  Not even while I was writing an eight page paper on a novel that I finished a week too late.  Yes, this class was, as the title states, about faith and literature.  We read a few novels and discussed them intensely in class, but that's not what I have learned from this class.  This class has taught me something much more important than how to analyze a text in the context of faith.

This class was about love.  The love that we receive from God.  The love that we are intended to show others.  The love that we actually show others.  So many kinds of love boiled down into one bare concept: Love is not easy.  Love requires effort from both parties.  We cannot honestly accept love unless we can give love in return.  In a busy quarter, it is so easy to forget about others and think only of my own troubles.  My own homework that constantly causes stress and my own friendships that are struggling so often took priority over the troubles of those closest to me and I am ashamed of it.  Ashamed to say that I could be selfish enough to not even think about my best friends before myself.  I ignored Christ and then, through my professor's ridiculous British accent, I heard these words: "Trying to love is running a marathon.  It is a constant struggle to the very end."  

She went on and on about how love is not meant to be something easy.  If love were something easy, it wouldn't be God's greatest challenge to us.  "Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God.  Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.  Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love."  (1 John 4:7-8)  It seems like such an easy thing to love those around us, but in the midst of our own troubled worlds, it becomes a constant struggle.  Ms. Wolfe told us that love means laying down your life.  Are we willing to do that?  Are we willing to lay down our own lives for those we love?  

I see this love all around me now.  I see it in the heartbreak of those around me and the comfort they can find so easily.  I see it in the support through daunting tasks that stir fear within us.  I see it in the constant effort others put forward to make a busy quarter just a little bit less stressful.  It is in the hugs, the cookies and the walks by the canal.  The listening ears and the comforting words.  It is everywhere and I want to be a part of it.

It is a challenge to love, but it is not an impossible task.  God does not call us to do the impossible, he calls us to do the things that stretch us.  If he does not challenge us, how then are we to grow?  I know I have grown this quarter exceptionally due to a class that I was placed in by mistake.  I don't think it was a mistake anymore, it is proof that everything happens for a purpose.  If I hadn't been placed in this class, I would have forgotten what love truly means.  I hope that you don't forget like I did, for "this is the message you have heard from the beginning: We should love one another."  (1 John 3:11)