Confession: You wouldn’t expect deep philosophy to come from a 1980’s pop love song by the Nylons, but that’s how a piece of it came to me.
The heart is not judged by how much you love, but by how much you’re loved by others.
The first time I heard it I laughed out loud—just as I did the night I found out Ryan Zook wanted to be my boyfriend—a crazy moment in which the world spun upside down and I laughed because I was dizzy.
The heart is not judged by how much you love, but by how much you’re loved by others.
What if it’s true?
You could say it’s not true in the strictest sense, because when we stand before God, the ultimate Judge, He will be interested in our own hearts’ choices and not the choices of others…
And yet when am I ever judged on my own merits? All you have to do is capitalize one of those words and it becomes the truest philosophy ever stated. The heart is not judged by how much you love, but by how much you’re loved by Others. Isn’t that our truest identity? And from there, it’s not a far step to say that perhaps that Beloved mark set on me by Jesus is reflected more accurately in the love of others toward me than in what I feel most often toward myself.
What if I am merry not because I feel merry but because my son experiences me that way?
What if the lavish love that sets my soul awash in times like Mothers’ Day and birthdays and long one-on-one talks and beautiful gifts and hand-written cards—the lavish love that I daily feel unworthy of—is the real measure of my worth?
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More coming. Slowly.
Then anyone who doesn’t experience that lavish love is worthless?
Yes. Not everyone will receive those lavish gifts from a loved one, but you have always been loved by your Creator, your Redeemer, and your Lover. “See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are.” You have never been Unloved.
Thank you.
Perhaps love is not always recognized. The Father has poured out His lavish love upon all His children. . . His love is experienced through His gifts that abound in so many ways. I think Elizabeth Barret Browning’s words,
“Earth’s crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God,
But only he who sees takes off his shoes;
The rest sit round and pluck blackberries.”
It takes a lot of humility to accept lavish love when my own weaknesses and imperfections are shouting loud at me.
This has been thought provoking for me.
Interesting. I’m still chewing on this one…