Love

I am thinking about love.

The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread. ~Mother Teresa

Don't we teach each other about love? And isn't it true that primacy in our relationships here may guide our impressions about God's love?

Right now I have stuff to do, but wanted to jot this down.

Later ... Okay, the deal is I've been reading about this notion of wooing ... As in God wooing his people to Him. Sometimes this wooing seems very tender, other times perhaps wild may be the best description. Wooing is pretty sophisticated stuff. I didn't date enough as a young woman to understand this concept. But I understand it now, at least with my head. The Bible has a lot to say about love, and I'm glad I'm thinking about this. I'm glad I didn't think a lot about it as a younger woman, because I'm pretty sure I would have been seduced by our cultures spin on love. Before I started trying to understand what love really is supposed to be about I was thinking about trust ... here on my blog. I wanted to experience how it might feel to trust ... living on the planet doesn't inspire much about trust. I guess in my family honesty and a good name were bedrock. How many times have I heard my dad stress the importance of trust in relationships. Trust is central. And, I'm thinking maybe it's the only solid foundation for love to be build on. Trust is difficult ... I think the verse Matthew 18:3
And he said: "I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. ... is a lot about trust. I've read many of the commentaries some are sure this is about lack of avarice or hatred ... power lust and worldly ambition ... someone said humility though not otherwise free from sin.

I'm working with what I've got ... I am the mother of five children. Trust is the factory setting. We are born hardwired to trust and our innocence leaves us as we practice deceptions and have betrayals visited upon us. That is what I think. ... As a child ... sure, it's a lot of different things. I think they all hinge on trust. Trusting a God who is unseen. It's not his unseenness that makes trust difficult for me ... I've seen where he has been, the difficulty is in not being able to walk, like the first people did, in the garden ... The difficulty is in bridging the gapping breach caused by original sin. I understand that work was done by Christ and is the hope of our salvation ... A salvation freely offered by grace to us all. I'm just thinking aout how to experience God when the gates to the garden are closed ... I think he invites relationship now. It feels like a process rather then an event.

Wooing ... Delightful. God wooing sinners back to him. Wooing is different from seduction in that wooing has a tenderness ... Wooing seems to me to be about love where seduction seems to be about lust. Love and lust are easily confused. Lust is easy ... love is not.

Well ... I'm working on these ideas. I haven't gotten this all worked out yet, but I have seen a picture of what wooing might look like ... Wooing is about cherishment rather then conquest.