.: one real clue :.

Let's just accept it - they may never truly get it! This world in which we live knows very little about real love. To start with, genuine love begins by being genuinely selfless. And how can a whole world of people that are bent on glorifying themselves have any clue about what it means to take that first step? Thus they have no real idea of what it means to think of someone else higher than they tend to think about themselves. How can a human world that teaches us to rule over everyone else through manipulation and control and every kind of human advantage know anything about seeking another person's highest good? How can this world that is so quick to use another human soul to achieve some end be in a place where it can be caught up with sacrificing everything that it may have to benefit someone other than itself? And the truth be told, how are we as Christians any better? Who are we to say that we truly love Christ when we do not take seriously His call to love others above ourselves? Let's face it - our churches have become places where those who say that they are following Christ are more concerned with being theologically correct and spiritually superior to those all around them, more than they are concerned with authentically loving their neighbors. To follow another is to imitate their every move, to be caught up with their ways of thinking, and to be consumed with what that other soul was or is consumed with. But is that going on in our own lives, if we truly are honest with ourselves? I fear that I fall miserably short of doing even that; following Christ. Real love begets real love. But when I continually allow myself to be fascinated with how I can advance my own agenda, as subtle as the case may be, all I succeed in is begetting more selfishness. To love someone would mean to let go of my own set of ideals for them. But how could I ever reach that sort of place, especially in a world such as this one? To love someone is to remove all hopes of somehow profiting myself in that endeavor, and giving all for the sake of another. What lies around me that would ever prompt me to live like that? I know the arrogance of this world far too well, for I bear it myself in forms far too cloaked for my neighbor to detect. And though I claim to know this love, you would never know it by ever knowing me. So I release all hopes of somehow just getting it. I release myself from thinking that this world will one day come through for me and point me in the right direction. For I know now that it knows nothing of love. We ourselves know nothing of love. Well, maybe almost nothing. We have been satisfied with the mere shadows of it, but very few have truly tasted of what the Father has intended all along. We make much noise about what we think it looks like, but every instance comes up short in some way or another. We fail... and in turn it fails, time and time again. When and where might we ever come face-to-face with what true love looks like? Its faint whispers are calling out to everyone who is discontent enough to listen for it. It begs us to come taste of something that is liberating, that sets a soul free to become what it was intended to be, rather than weighing it down even more. I pray that it seizes every one of us before we find a soothing alternative. No question, it is there. He Himself stands ready to teach us, though it is far beyond us. But do we truly want to learn to love like that? The question remains, unchanging from day to day.