Labor of Love part 5
I always find the story of Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane interesting. And I've heard quite a bit of preaching about what Jesus actually meant when He asked for the cup to pass from Him. I don't want to get into all of that tonight. I simply want to focus on the truth--the immaculate, undeniable, unstoppable truth--that love is giving. Which means it's not about you. It's about the people you are giving yourself to. Love is never about getting. If you're "loving" someone in order to get what you want from them... that's not love. That's manipulation. I've seen people do this, and it sickens me. And, let me just say, I've seen people "give" someone a gift... and then get mad about how that gift was received, or enjoyed. Once someone gave me a hat. Which was nice, because I like hats. But I also knew someone who wanted that same type of hat and didn't have one. I had more than one. So I gave the hat to the other person. And the person who gave it to me flipped out. Now, with my Will Graham super empathy where I can almost always see both sides of the story... I can see where the gift giver was coming from. They wante ME to have the hat. But at the same time--and this is important--once you give someone something... your part is done. You can't control what happens next. Trying to just leads to anger and frustration. It's the same thing with love. You can't force people to pick up what you're laying down. The best you can do is give what you've got and then keep on giving it. Don't worry about what you get out of it, or what you want out of it. The reward is in the giving, not in what happens next. I say all this, to end this Rant series, to say that we make labors of love much harder than they have to be. We get so caught up in what WE want out of the situation that we lose, sometimes, what GOD wants out of a situation. Not MY will, but YOURS be done, Father. See? I brought it back around to Gethsemane. Love is not about getting what you want. But perfect love is about wanting... to love. There is no fear in love. You don't have to worry about what will happen next. My personal definition of love is 2 Corinthians 12:15 in the New Living Translation, "I will gladly spend myself and all I have for you, even though it seems that the more I love you, the less you love me." Giving everything you have and everything you are without worrying about getting anything out of it. Because it doesn't matter if you get anything out of it. What you're supposed to get out of it is the edification of someone else. Loving someone is about THEM getting something out of it. And, by the way, when you look at it that way, you DO get something out of it. The tide lifts all ships. We're all in this together. Helping someone else succeed is, in a very real sense, succeeding yourself. That's our job. Our purpose. Our mission in life. Our calling. That's why we were created--to be loved by God and to love each other with His love. And we can do that with every breath we take and every move we make... when we put others first. When we get over ourselves, or get past ourselves, and look for what others need. Seeing a need and meeting it is a labor of love. Doing for others because God has done for you (probably THROUGH others)!