To Love and To Be Loved

When I read a book, watch a movie, or even listen to a sermon, I like to reflect afterwards, "What did I get out of that?  What can I take with me from that story?"

We recently watched the new movie version of Dune.  I'd seen the original movie, maybe 30 years ago.  I'd also read the book.  Honestly, the story just never grabbed my attention.

But it was family time; I watched anyway, and...nothing.  That is, nothing until...that one scene that I can't stop thinking about.

In this scene, the main character, a young man named Paul, is forced to be a "champion" for his mother and fight another man.  As Paul bests the man and asks him to yield, he learns that this is a fight to the death.  And Paul's mother responds, "But Paul has never killed a man."

That's when I started feeling what Paul must have been feeling.  He was going to take a life; and life, any life, is precious.  Paul is deeply moved as this man dies, and he exhibits kindness and compassion, even as he kills the man.     

We were created to love and to be loved, to know one another and to be known.  This truth is easy to say and to know, but it's not always easy to feel it.  In this movie, I felt it.

There have been a few times in my life where I've been privileged to feel that truth - and it's a feeling I cherish, certainly a gift from God.

God's Word says: 

God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.  Romans 5:8

We can assent to or agree with that statement.  But do we feel it?  And how do we feel it?  How do we feel God's love?

There is an aspect of "felt" love when we become aware of our own sin, know the shame and helplessness of our situation, and are then brought to repentance by the gospel, by Christ's death on the cross for us.  There's a comfort and a feeling in that, in having God's love for us shown in the forgiveness of our sins.

And we want that feeling, that reassurance of being loved.  I think that's why a lot of church services and even Christian books attempt to evoke emotion or make us "feel good."

But I think a main way that we "feel" God's love for us is through other people. 

A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.  John 13:34-35

Just as He loves us, we are to love other people, to get to know them, to serve them, to forgive them.  In that "loving of others" is the feeling of love.

 

And loving others isn't easy; it's tiring, and it's risky.  We can and do get hurt.  But knowing other people, loving them, and the risk of being hurt - it's worth it, because people are worth it.  

 

It was worth it to Jesus, to be born as a man like us, to live among us, to die for us.  And He did it for love, because He loves us, because He loves me.  

Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God...In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.  Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.  No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.  1 John 4:7, 10-12