It is like desperately searching for your eyeglasses which are perfectly perched and securely planted, out of sight, on top of your head.
Billions of people of nearly all ages, class and creed, scattered across continents and in diverse situations, are on a fierce and feverish search for a thing they call…love.
There appears to be a wide, open chasm tucked somewhere within our souls, begging to be filled. It is a persistent and pressing desire for total acceptance of faults and flaws, complete adoration, constant celebration, encouragement, and a secure, soft, and welcomed place in someone else’s eyes and heart.
This search has taken many beyond resistant borders, braving treacherous oceans, trampling through swamps and snake-infested forests, and breaching tough security barriers to find that special and illusive thing.
On social media, the search takes on even greater intensity and urgency. Online romance brings many to pledge their undying commitment and even their life’s worth for the affection of images that may not even exist.
Umpteenth numbers of people – young and old – have ended up dead in this unyielding search for this illusory dream prescribed by the world.
Only last week, the body of another child, a 12-year-old boy, was fished from Victoria Pier, downtown Kingston. It is said that his search for love led to him taking his own life.
The strangest thing is that the ideal love, that so many seek is widely, generously, and easily available to anyone who is open to receive it. Interestingly, this love is eternal, beyond the temporal, intentional, intense, forgiving, embracing, generous, and unrelenting. But it escapes many.
So deep and undiluted is God’s love for humanity that it reaches into the darkest, creepiest, and most wretched of places where the most decrepit of human life exists and lovingly plucks near-carcasses from certain damnation and back to abundant life.
So great is the measure of God’s love that He will give just about anything to demonstrate it. He gave the ultimate treasure of heaven—His Only Begotten Son—so that anyone and everyone who believes in Him should be saved.
Every single day, God generously and freely demonstrates to humanity that we are the apple of His eye. The depth of His love delivers miracles, healing, brand new mercies, blessings untold, and abundant grace daily to His people.
If only humanity would understand the magnanimity and absolute intensity of God’s love towards His creation, they would never glance at the wiles of the enemy, engage in much of the foolishness and recklessness that only lead to ultimate destruction.
The fullness of God’s love is beyond human comprehension. Even if one over-indulges in self-love to the total exclusion of anyone else, no one can love beyond the reach and capability of God.
If God did not love us beyond our many faults, He would have destroyed us all a long, long time ago. The unbearable stench of sin rising up to the heavens from the earth on any given day would justify the complete obliteration of the human species.
When men are instructed to love their wives as Christ loves the Church, it is not a play-play thing. God expects that a level of His love will be replicated among men. This kind of love cannot abuse, harm, or, worse of all, murder one’s spouse. It cannot be disloyal. It cannot disparage privately or publicly.
When humanity is commanded to love the Lord God with all our hearts, souls, and might and our neighbours as ourselves, this is serious business. It is the only way to avoid reproach.
In many societies, where love does not exist among neighbours, envy, malice, robberies, rape, and murder are normalised and trivialised.
Families fall apart and even connive in deadly decades-long feuds over the simplest of things where there is a harbour of hatred. Carnal abuse, incest, and other spirits of lust and deceit are entertained and entrenched in bloodlines.
Too many young women have bought into the Mills and Boon – story book picture of love, and are pursuing a false ‘Barbie dolly’ image to which they have pinned their self-worth and the basis of any relationship. Men, who are similarly deluded, are also of the view that physical beauty equates to real love and not much else. The kind of love that is based on the physique diminishes with ageing bodies, waning energies and is loyal to none. It easily dishonours others, is certainly not long-suffering, is selfish and easily angered.
So many people give up on God, themselves and even their families, and are tricked and entrapped by the enemy into a train wreck of a journey to find love that is seeking to find them.
Abject wickedness, despotic dealings, corruption, and desperation seem boundless in loveless societies. Even nature conspires against love-starved nations. Hatred habours diseases, known and unknown to man.
Hatred triggers the mind to try to predict what the person being hated may do as a defense mechanism. This leads to anxiety and paranoia, which affects overall mental health. Experts say that hatred negatively impacts the nervous, immune, and endocrine systems.
The true complexion of love is patience and kindness. It does not envy, nor boasts and it is definitely not proud. It is slow to anger, swift to bless, happy to forgive, gladly looks beyond faults and flaws, and supplies needs.
When God set His love on Israel, it was limitless. He forgave them every time they offended and repented. He chastised and chastened, but His love endured.
‘God is love’ is the most profound declaration that was ever made since Adam. It is the unadulterated eternal truth and unequivocally, the most overlooked and frequently forgotten fact of human existence.
If only we would accept, embrace, and replicate this precious gift, which God generously and richly lavishes on us all.
By the way, your eyeglasses are on your head!