Love Has You

 

“Secure – Love has me – you relay and receive what others have to other, don’t worry about whether you will get what you need, don’t experience shame, can try new things and make mistakes, and can relax.”  Sacred Attachment by Michael John Cusick

 

Love has you.  Full stop.  End of sentence.  I know that many voices want to contradict and challenge this idea.  People are shouting at their screens right now or the piece of paper where they are reading this, saying, “Well, love doesn’t have me, Wes…because you don’t know what so-and-so did to me, said to me, and hurt me this week.”  You're right.  I don’t.  I don’t know the discrimination you faced because of the color of your skin or because of the person you love.  I don’t know what it is like to be you.  But I do know that God’s love has you.  That doesn’t mean you are “safe and secure from all alarms.”  Ask Job, Jeremiah, and Jonah.  Ask Mary, Hannah, and Hagar.  Ask Jesus.  Love has me is not a guarantee of a bubble-wrapped life safe from being tossed, thrown, dropped, or dragged through valley moments you did not ask for…thank you very much, God.  Scripture tells us time and time again that faith is not an insurance policy.  Faith is not a money-back guarantee.  We know, from grief work, that the price of love is pain.  People we love die.  There is an empty chair at all our tables this Thanksgiving for someone we love and whose presence left fingerprints on our hearts.  There is ongoing hate that hovers in the cold, stone hearts of people ~ true of Pharaoh in Exodus and Caesar in Jesus’ day.  I don’t know what makes you feel insecure, unsafe ~ but I do know that Cusick is right, that we need places and people who see us, soothe us, help us feel safe and secure to be ourselves.  This is always the vision for the church ~ not that we get it right all the time.  We are still featherless bipeds with more than a few bugs in our operating system.  I still say things I immediately regret and want to grab the invisible words from the air and shove them back in my mouth.  I am human ~ from the Latin humus meaning ground.  I am soil and stardust.  I am blessed and broken.  I am hurting and holy.  All of this is true.  When I can fully lean in and live out of that truth, I proclaim with Jacob, “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I was not aware of it.” (Genesis 28:16).  May you and I find many moments when we say those words in the coming days.  Amen.