VirtuaLife

An excerpt from my reflections (29.03.08):

It hit me just after lifegroup tonight as I was tuning my voice for praise and worship. It carefully inserted itself into my mind between the lyrics of “You Gave Me Love” (Reuben Morgan, Hillsong), giving me pause and shoving me somewhat abruptly into reflection. So what was this thought?

“You gave me a love that caused my heart to overflow,
You gave me love much deeper than my heart would ever know
[Insert … here]
You have set my feet where I belong
Put within my heart a brand new song!”

I’ve said it many times - I’m really passionate about people. I’m passionate about reaching out to those who have never had a chance to know Him properly. I’m passionate about bringing purpose and meaning, about bringing SIGNIFICANCE to even just one more person’s life. It’s a passion alright! It’s a passion that allows me to ask God for strength and endurance, for the ability to care well beyond what I could singularly accomplish. Everyone deserves to know their God. Everyone.

But what about those brothers and sisters of mine who have already come to know Him? Do they need the same love and encouragement? Do they need to be urged gently onwards with loving criticism, with a hug or friendly squeeze, with a kind word? Happily, I believe they do! Where I have erred is in the implementation. Imagine for a moment a game like The Sims 2. You remember those little coloured +es and -es that appear over the sims’ heads? I used to walk around imagining little love-meters floating over all of my peeps’ heads. I used to watch people interacting, people talking to each other, cuddling and hugging, and I’d imagine these little love-meters filling up. A full meter = someone who feels loved. And I'd focus on those people with empty meters in order to give them a little bit of a top-up, a booster shot. Now that aint a bad thing in itself – my love for these people was 100% real. Unfortunately, it was also 100% clinical. Because I was busied myself looking after the ‘unloved’, I wouldn’t want to ‘waste’ my booster shots (ahaha) on the loved ones.


In this case, I guess I'm the girl who's watching the other two. But I'm so much more subtle than that! Err.

However I realised the following flaw in this approach. Allow me to use a slightly different scenario for illustration. Say it was my birthday and I was expecting gifts from people. If there were 10 people coming to my party, I’d be 100% happy with just five gifts, even if they weren’t the gifts I wanted. If I got six gifts, I would still be 100% happy, no more. That is the principle for diminishing returns – after a certain numerical value, no more tangible benefit can be gained. This gift doesn’t make me happier than I already am, but MAYBE it contains a gift that I have desired for a long time. In other words, I may not be any happier, but I may end up being more fulfilled.

Back to tonight. I’ve been convicted that there is a whole dimension of loving others I have totally overlooked in my desire to care for everyone simultaneously. It had completely slipped my mind how personal the gift of love is. A person’s love-meter may be 100% but he/she might not be getting the RIGHT kind of love. A purely clinical approach to this kind of situation is unjustified by virtue of the fact that we can never really KNOW the hearts of others (let alone ourselves). Agape love by its nature is unconditional so attempts to emulate this should not have such clinical parameters restricting me from showing love to others, right?

“So now I am giving you a new commandment: Love each other. Just as I have loved you” (John 13:34). To love AS CHRIST LOVED was a revolutionary concept, for You gave me love much deeper than my heart would ever know. Yes, my approach did demonstrate love but I’ll be the first to admit it was not fully Christlike in scope.

How does this play out in practice? Let me use my lifegroup as an example. There’s about 20-30 of us on a week-by-week basis, each with our unique needs, fears, and contributions to the rest of the group. Naturally, for a group that big, there are smaller groups that the peeps tend to hang out in. Some of these groups do a better job at showing love than others. Some groups always have full love-meters; others have love-meters that fluctuate; yet others seem to be running perpetually low. To the latter types I would avail myself, praying for words of comfort and wisdom from God to refuel and re-energise them. To the former type I would generally distance myself. But now I know that even if I cannot make someone feel any more ‘happy’ or loved’, maybe the ‘gifts’ in my life will speak into theirs in a powerful and transforming manner.

It’s going to be hard, make no mistake. I will be pushing my ability to utilise all of the love languages, even those I am not inherently disposed to. It will require me to overcome my own fears and inhibitions and will force a level of critical self-analysis that may open even more wounds than I am currently aware of. Yet, as I have done before, I am committing to let go, and let God =).

I’ll finish with this quote: “Yes, you will be enriched so that you can give even more generously. And we take your gifts to those who need them, they will break out in thanksgiving to God” (2 Corinthians 9:11). In other words, we are blessed so that we may be a blessing unto others. And the love-meter? It's so much more than that.

Don’t squander your giftings ^^.

In Faith, Hope and Love!