Love Believes All Things

There is a careless streak in love. It can be careless with goods, pouring expensive perfume on a Master's feet and hair (John 12:3). A careful person would have measured it out beforehand--not too much (keeping some for oneself), not too little (ensuring that impression of generosity is given). Love is also careless with one's self. It is risky to put oneself out for another, to go out of one's way to help another person--when one is not sure of how to do it well. One may be misunderstood, deceived, hurt. We could flub our overtures of love and end up looking ridiculous. Moved by love, however, we overpower our fear and take the risk.

Love is careless, too, with trust. Love is ready to believe. Love can throw off reserve. It does not worry too much about being cheated, because it has eyes only for the other's needs. If love seems a little naive it is not for lack of experience with people, but because love does not bother to calculate the odds on people.

~~from Love Within Limits by Lewis B. Smedes

This is taken from one of my favourite books. I loved this part of the book, a chapter based on the 7th verse of 1 Corinthians 13, "...love believes all things." I have to confess that I love this excerpt more for my own sake than anything else. My heart tends to love people before my head has had a chance to calculate the odds on them. I have always been this way and I have grown to accept it and work with it, but it also means I hurt more than I otherwise might.

I wondered for a time...or maybe I wondered many times...if it wouldn't just be better to be a little more indifferent, a little more callous, a little more calculating. Give people a chance to prove themselves before I throw my heart into the ring. Try a wait-and-see approach.

It sounds like an idea with merit, but my heart will not agree to it. When you put it that way, it doesn't seem so much like love anymore, but rather more like bargaining. Like demanding a safety net before you put yourself on the line. Like writing up a pre-nuptial agreement before you'll go out and buy the ring.

It does hurt, sometimes, to love someone and have them not prove worthy of your love. Or to love someone and not be loved in return. Or to love someone and have the friendship fade for lack of time and interest. But it can be survived. More than that, it can be an experience which brings growth and wisdom and change. Love may come with a cost, but I believe it is worth the cost.

I wrote yesterday about the death of my Grandpa Bill. For all of the years that he knew me, he loved me well. It is one of the things that I will always carry in my heart...seeing what it means to love someone well. I know love, at times, came with a cost for him, but he is Home now. And he can clearly see all that his love meant to each person whose life he touched.

"Beloved, let us love one another, for love comes from God."

1 John 4:7