Flexible part 2
Love is flexible. Because love doesn't demand His own way. Love lets people be who they are... and loves them anyway. That's why love never fails. Because love endures. Love never fails because love never gives up. That's basically the only way in which love is not flexible. Other than not giving up, love is willing to do anything. Give everything He has and everything He is. But, and I've Ranted on this before, that does NOT mean you should put yourself, or keep yourself, in a bad situation. There are some people out there that you can't reach. Some people that don't "get" you. Some people that will never pick up what you're laying down. And that's ok. Because you are not called to fix every problem for everybody. You are called to let God love you, and to love others with that same love. Once you've done your best its either enough... or its not. And either way you've done what YOU can do. Some people plant, some people water... I don't think loving someone is ever a wasted effort. But my point for this Rant series is that you have to be flexible. Because you can't love everybody the same way. What's that book? The Five Languages of Love? Something like that. People express love differently and people receive love differently. One of the "problems" I have with the so-called golden rule is when we kind of get it a little bit twisted around and think that, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" means, "I did to them what I want them do to me... so why aren't they doing it to me?" Jesus wasn't saying we should be nice in order to get what we want. Kindness isn't kindness if you expect something because of it. And, like, if I want a Mountain Dew... giving someone a Mountain Dew isn't the way to go. They might not even LIKE Mountain Dew. The point is, put yourself in their shoes. See THEIR need and meet it. Because you would like someone to see YOUR need and meet it. But don't ever give in order to get. Love is never about getting. Because love IS giving. We already have everything we need. Even when it doesn't seem like it. There's a whole Kingdom economy that is available to us. We don't have to struggle and just barely get by by the skin of our teeth. We can live out of our abundance. We can receive and release the gift we've been given, and in that way EXPERIENCE the gift we've been given. Because the gift is eternal life. An abundant, everlasting, eternal, Resurrection Life that IS a life of being loved and loving others. Sharing what we have by sharing who we are. But not expecting people to be anything they're not. You can't make love conditional. Because then its not love. NOTHING can separate us from the love of Christ. Which means nothing SHOULD separate us from each other--again, there are things we should not tolerate. There are situations we should not stay in. But we can still love people even if they hurt us. We can still choose the high road, if I can say it that way. We can let stuff roll off of us like water off a duck's back instead of getting mad at every little thing. We can be flexible. We can stop expecting people to be our idea of who they should be and we can let them be who they are. And we can love them no matter what. In the way that THEY need to be loved. Simply by knowing and believing that WE are loved. By receiving and releasing the love of God that fills us to overflowing. We can simply let it out. Naturally. Flexibly!