True Love

It is with chagrin and even shame that I write this.....

“Perfect love casts out fear”, yet I protect myself from the fear of rejection by refusal to testify of the saving work of Christ in myself and His desire to see it lived out in ALL the peoples of the world. “That none should perish, but have everlasting life”. I keep that truth hidden in myself and allow others to go blindly on into a sure death that lasts for eternity. How can I even say I love? True love is unconditional, it requires nothing in return, in fact, is tested in that very scenario. Extended yet not received nor reciprocated. It can be considered murder, to allow one to walk into certain death, with foreknowledge and ability to circumvent that end.

The story of the bus.

There was a day when a man was walking down the street. The man was a poor beggar from another part of town. The street was in a very nice part of town where the homes were neatly set in rows with children playing in the yards. The man saw a truck in the distance coming quickly down the street. In the other direction, a child riding her bicycle in the street. No one was in sight and the child was oblivious to the oncoming danger. The poor man burst into a run and roughly pushed the child and her bike out of the street, knocking her down and causing the child to cry out. The truck roared by without even a notice or horn honk to warn anyone of the danger. But the cry of the child was heard. The parents of the child and neighbors from all up and down the street came boiling out of their homes to see what was the matter. They saw the little girl on the ground crying and the beggar man there with her. They seized the man and began to berate him for his actions. He tried to explain about the truck and the danger the child was in to no avail. No one had ever seen the truck. The police were called and the man was taken away to be prosecuted and punished. To protect the neighborhood from the danger of men like him.

This is love. Without regard to himself, the man saves the life of a little girl. A girl he did not know, nor would ever receive anything from. He recognized the threat to her life and intervened to avert that outcome. The little girl lives but he has lost the little that he had left of his life, his freedom.

This is love