just in cases

I watched this movie tonight. Classic. Though I gotta say, the spotlighting of that terrible mariah carey song that is a disgrace to Christmas songs all around almost ruins it. Almost. Ok well not really at all, but it isn't good.

I love this movie because Kiera Knightley is really pretty. Wait. No...

I love this movie because it's real. Sure it has its depictions of grand love acquisition, but it also has the heartache of love, the loss of love, the sacrifice of love, the work of love.

A couple years ago I wanted to be a student of love. I wanted to learn what I could of it for when that time arose to finally give it. I read books like The Four Loves by C.S. Lewis and Works of Love by Soren Kierkegaard. I thought a lot about it. I talked to older married people, some who had been divorced, some who stayed single.

I'm sure a fair amount of all of that came from fear. I think part of me still believes that you can love someone well enough to ensure their continued love in return. I don't think it's true. But it's too scary that it's not. How does someone wake up one day and 'realize' they don't love their spouse anymore? And that happens. That terrifies me.

I want someone who will fight for life--and for love.

"A heart resolved to love can radiate goodness without limits." Love is what all of this is really about. Life. How do we settle for less? For television. For watching love stories instead of living our own. To avoid fear by eliminating want. And whenever that is stirred within us, how will it keep stirring if we shut it off every time? What stirs in you when you watch something like Love Actually, or Braveheart, or The Shawshank Redemption, or You've Got Mail? (Yes I said You've Got Mail).

I find it interesting how people look to find security in God. Isn't that contrary to faith? Isn't that God serving us? But we are to serve him. Yes he blesses us, but what do we know about true blessing? A wife and kids? A good paying job? A 401k? Yeah I don't know what Ezekiel would say about that after God told him he was taking away his wife, the delight of his eyes. Oh yeah, and that he shouldn't weep over it (Ez 24).

"The strangest paradox in Christianity is that it is a mingling of infinite agony and infinite bliss." As such is love. To live for God is to love, and to do that we need to truly learn how to love. The education continues. Though I'm not doing much reading these days.

Don't we all do what we can to be ready for that, or to continue in it as best we can? Would you learn another language? When things get tough, will you fight? What wouldn't you do? Where can you draw the line with love? Can you?

I stood at the airport not long ago, watching the arrivals, people greeting one another. And I watched the people with no one to greet them walk past quickly. If there's anything that marks this world more than the dynamic power of full love, it's the absence of it and the longing when it's lost. Love actually is all around, but do we know it? Is it in our hearts truly? Are we too selfish to really possess love?

What have you learned of love?