Love who?
Song of the Week: Jeopardy by Penny and Sparrow (2024)
Book of the Week: Following Jesus by Henri Nouwen (2019)
We’ve successfully wrapped up the Fall semester and are careening toward Christmas, and subsequently, 2025. I just looked down at my shoes that I bought at the end of the summer - they’re beat up. Some stains I don’t recognize, some I do (coffee obviously, and the odd mustard), the Off The Wall label on the heel is worn off in the middle, etc. They’re tan, albeit a darker shade now than they started - and they look a little like me. Not tan of course (I burn. I go from red/pink to white and back again), but a kind of stained, a little beat up, could use a day off. I beat the crap out of my shoes, partly because it’s their job to touch the ground for me, and somewhere along the way I stopped caring if I had clean shoes. I’m not trying to impress anybody with my feet or what’s on them, so why worry?
I’m not sure if this is what that means, but I think it’s growth - I’ve become more aware of my insecurities about my looks, wanting to come across like I’m well put together, to impress people, and it’s frankly exhausting. I don’t know if I’ll ever be fully differentiated from people’s opinions but I like to think I’m making progress - which brings me to the topic of neediness and love. I’ve been reading Following Jesus by Henri Nouwen lately - it’s mostly good! I like Henri, he is what I’m just now in my brain calling “aggressively tender” - he’s very kind, and wants you to know that you are fully loved without reservation - but he writes words that will not allow you to feel unloved. He simply won’t let you walk away from his books without knowing that he thinks you are forgiven, redeemed, and loved - and from that place, called to pour those things out on others. He died the year I was born, and I don’t know much about his personal life, but I think he was probably a hugger. Chapter 3 of Following Jesus is titled “The Challenge” and it’s about Jesus’ call in Luke 6:27-36 to love our enemies - a challenge, for sure. Here are some of the points that are resonating with me.
Our neediness, which comes from our woundedness, which comes from our pain, keeps us from loving well. My needs are seemingly boundless. I need praise from people, I need to know that people like me, I need to know that I’m doing the right thing, I need to know that I’m on the right track, I need to know that people are impressed by my work, etc. This creates so many deficiencies. When people praise me, it’s never enough - I feel appreciated for a few minutes, then I slide into a soup of “what if I do something to lose that, what if they don’t actually know me, what if they’re not being honest”. When I let my neediness reign and look to other people to fill those needs, my relationships (all of them - friends, enemies, etc.) become transactional. Without more than a blink of an eye, instead of being forgiving, anger rises up when I feel unjustly treated, instead of celebrating with those who celebrate, I become envious of the success of others, and instead of striving for contentment, I evaluate my relationships on the basis of what they bring me, putting a burden on others that they do not need to bear.
It is only love from God that allows us to freely love others. A simple one, but profound. Nouwen calls this the original love, or the first love. It was the love that God had in creating us, that he shows in providing for us, and lives out in how he redeems us. It’s resting in that love that frees us from the shackles of the opinions of others, the cycles of our own dysfunction, and the rat race of needing others to validate us. This is the God-sized hole in our hearts that - when filled by this love, experienced in prayer - releases us to give without expecting return, work from a place of joy and wholeness, and to love without deeply and vibrantly.
Lastly, we love our enemies by praying for them and intentionally moving toward them. This is hard, I can’t lie. As a semi-pro grudge holder, praying for my enemies at times has felt like pulling my own teeth, but I will say, the more I make a habit of it, the more I see transformation in my relationships (external) and in my heart (internal). You may think you don;t have enemies, but something Nouwen wrote opened my eyes to that possible blind spot. He says “Many of us have a strange need to divide the world up into people who are for us and those who are against us. Even more strange is that our identity is often dependent on having enemies” (Nouwen, p64). Prayer leads to forgiveness, and forgiving an enemy leads to us letting go of an angry person inside of us that is motivated and fed by fear and pain. It is healing.
This Christmas, look to the one who loves his enemies perfectly, and died on the cross for us.
Merry Christmas,
Josh
