Traveling so much this summer, I have been in the car a lot,
which has led to listening to music for hours and hours at a time. I’ve
listened to the radio, my own music, both new and old. The theme remains
constant in much of the music. Love. As I was listening to some familiar
favorites on a recent trip to Kansas City, I started wondering: why has love
become the pinnacle of our existence?
All the songs and movies we fill our minds and time with are
essentially about this search; trying to find that half that makes us whole. If
you listen to the pain in the lyrics of a blues song or the betrayal in the melody
of a jazz song, it seems that everyone is missing something.
As I thought more
about this, it hit me: everyone on this planet is looking for something. We’re all wandering around, searching for
things to place in our lives to make us feel. To feel something. Or anything.
We want to find purpose and meaning. If we could just find love, then certainly
we’ve found it. Love has become the pinnacle of our existence.
Everyone is walking around as half a person, looking for
that perfectly fitting puzzle piece to complete them, and if you don’t find
that piece, you have to keep looking until you do. If we can just find that missing half, that
right person, everything else fits in place, and the world makes sense. At least
that’s what the movies and songs tell us. Ask any married couple and I believe
they will let you know their spouse did not answer all their questions and
solve all their problems.
I in no way am condemning marriage and love; I’m their
biggest fan! I cry at every wedding, even if I don’t know the couple, and I
love the beautiful picture that marriage paints of Christ’s love for the
church. I can only hope to take part in such beauty some day. But, doesn’t it
seem that if finding this person doesn’t answer our questions, and solve our
problems, that it’s not the best thing to spend our life searching for?
So it begs the question; what should we be searching for?
It makes sense that this is what we feel will make our lives
complete. Amidst all the things we can
use to fill this aching void in our life we feel that relationships with others
are the most satisfying.
This is simply because they are the most like the
relationship God intends for us to have with Him.
They are the most
satisfying of all earthly things. They fulfill us the most. Relationships are
the things that we miss the most when they are gone and that hurt us the most
when they go wrong. Nothing can cause us more pain than the people we love.
I was talking to a friend the other day, who is not a
believer in the relationship Christ intends for us to have with Him, but even
he admitted that having an intimate, intellectual human connection with someone
is much more satisfying than any other pleasure or high. It’s beautiful.
But these beautiful things that God has placed in our life
and in our world often become the very same things we try to use to replace Him
and our need for relationship with Him.
So if the love between humans can show us something, I
believe that it is the love of Christ that we’re all inherently searching for.
We can’t help it. We need something to fill that void, and we often settle for
human companionship when we could have companionship with our creator. The beauty of love between humans is
enthralling and intended by God, but it and all the beauty of life are proof of
God’s overwhelming existence. Timothy Keller, in his book, The Reason for God, would argue that this beauty is one we are all
aware of, but simply refuse to recognize because that recognition leads to a
necessary sacrifice many are not willing to make.
Let’s recognize the beauty of love, but under the
overarching truth that the Lord’s love is much greater and that earthly love and all it's enamoring beauty are a gift
straight from Him. Love is not our end-all, so let’s not use a beautiful, yet
imperfect earthly relationship to try and replace our need for a Savior.
