LOVE HURTS!

Adapted for Our Daily Bread - Food for the Soul. Special Edition.
Dave Egner

1 John 4:7-16

verse 9&10. "This is how God showed his love amoung us:He sent His one and only Son into the world that we might live through Him. This is love: not that we love God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins."

LOVE HURTS!

"Sometimes love sure hurts!" The mother and father were expressing the difficulties and heartaches of guiding their children through their teen years. "Maybe if we didn't love them quite so much it wouldn't be so hard," the man added.

Even though love brings pain and sorrow what would life be without it? In his book The Four loves, C.S. Lewis wrote:

"To love all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you mustgive your heart to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully around hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness... The only place outside heaven you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers ... of love is hell."

To love is to take risks, to expose our hearts. Sometimes it hurts! It hurt Jesus Christ, but He kept on loving - even at the cost of His life. And He asked us to "love one another as I have loved you" (John 1:12)

Truly loving that spouse, that teenager, that neighbour, that colleague is Christlike, and its better than locking your heart in the coffin of self-centredness.

Thinking It Over:

How have you been hurt by those you've tried to love? Have you been tempted to withhold your love from them as well?