Love Has A NameSýnishorn

Love is More Than a Theory (it’s really, really messy)

If you end up in a church on any given Sunday, there’s a high percent chance you’ll hear about loving people.

“Love” is an amazing concept in theory. So often, after we go to church and hear about love, many of us simply return to nice, safe, comfortable neighborhoods filled with people exactly like us, having very few challenges to the “Amazing Love” theories we’ve been promoting. If there happens to be someone a little rough around the edges walking down our block, thankfully we have garages that we can drive into at the end of the workday, closing the door behind us before we even turn off the car.

Love is great in theory. Great, until it messes up our nice, tidy lives.

When I look at the church and the lives of other Christians (including my own), everything seems neat and clean. Safe lives separated from anything or anyone dirty, shady, or messy. Nice house. Nice car. Nice area of town. The American Dream.

The longer we follow Jesus, the neater, cleaner, and safer our lives seem to become.

Yet in so many ways, the American Dream is very different from the words and actions of Jesus. So different. Most of the people Jesus hung out with were messy people living messy lives.

Everyone knew how messy they were and pretty much stayed away. Jesus hung out with the people others wrote off. He hung out with the people who were living lives completely different from the life he wanted them to live. And some of the people Jesus crossed paths with didn’t magically turn their lives around and live “good Christian lives” either. They stayed messy, yet Jesus still loved them.

Love is messy. Really messy.

If you’re a Christian and your life looks perfectly neat and clean, you might want to make sure you’re actually following Jesus. If there’s no one in your life that’s messy or really hard to love, I’d encourage you to start putting yourself in places where you can meet people like that. The hard, messy places.

Day 5 Question:

Take an honest look at your life—is your life getting cleaner or messier the longer you follow Jesus? Why do you think that is? What needs to change?