Story of Love

This is a little poem that I wrote a long time ago and just thought I'd dredge up. I wrote it for a lesson plan and I'll admit it's actually not too bad, but then again I don't know if it's any good either.

Story of Love

In the beginning there was God, and God was love

He was perfect in his love and because of it God created man

With the first breath of life that was forced into the dust figure of Adam God intended love to be the very power behind the start of life

When Adam awoke he found a world created for him because a powerful Maker wanted to give Adam the very finest he had to offer

The day time was filled with a paradise of creatures on earth and at night the skies displayed the vast theater of God

Adam and God dwelled together in love

Because God wanted Adam's knowledge of love to deepen he soon gave Adam a companion to walk with him through the many trials of life

For God knew that although he had created something perfect in love that man would turn his back on God and choose what he foolishly thought to be wisdom

Perfect in its conception by the creator and forever marred by the creation, man fell and with it love too was forever altered

But hope still lingered

Eventually love blossomed and Adam and Eve conceived sons

Tragically the earth was once again struck by dark powers when love took on a deplorable new form, love of the self

Cain murdered Able

Like dark stands opposite to light so hate was born to diminish love

God's people went about the earth disrupting God's intentions until redemption for mankind became an impossible concept

Even though the evil of men had spread beyond reproof God loved his creation still and so he gave it a chance to start over in the form of a forty day torrent of water from the heavens

Yet mankind still sought to split themselves into factions, warring in a never-ending conquest for superiority, abandoning the concept of love

Through the ages God's faith in us endured

He still loved his people enough to give them heroes with names that echo in eternity, names like Moses, Joseph, Jacob, Elijah, Ruth, Ester, David, Job, and Daniel

While man continued to flourish and flounder, God devised a way to once and for all communicate his extreme love for a people he so desperately wanted to connect to

Christ was born of a woman, and God incarnate walked the earth

Christ loved everyone regardless of race, creed, station in life, or deeds committed in the past

Christ shattered our concept of love when he not only told us to love our enemies but then died to prove that he meant it

God stood by and sacrificed his own son that through the perfection of his life and ultimately the selflessness of his death, all men might have a standard to which they could hold love

When Christ rose after descending for three days into hell he returned triumphant as a living testament that love conquers all, even a torturous death, even for an unrepentant species

Our knowledge of love could have stopped there but God wanted our understanding to be complete and deep and so he gave us twenty-three other books of the Bible after the stories of the life and times of Christ, so that we could fully appreciate what our Heavenly Father has done for us in giving us love

Throughout his books love was an overarching theme and at the end came a warning of what was to come when God's love would leave this world

We now stand as a culture that doesn't understand what the true significance of the word love

We have perverted, twisted, misused, misunderstood, and abused this gift of love

We have taken it from its exalted position and made it a cliché to be falsely understood in a single song on the radio

Rejecting the shape of love we have instead formed a mold into which we continually cram our limited understanding of love

Stripped of its power, brought low by villains, and overused to the extremity, love now seems a trite phrase that we can barely tell one another with conviction

The idea that an all powerful God could hunger for a connection with us so much that he sent the most precious gift that he could fashion and then let dirty hands put nails into his sons' is so unbelievable that the world at large chooses to reject it

Rather we'd set our sight on things that glitter in the sun or melt in our hands

We'll stamp the word on t-shirts, tattoo it on our bodies, demand it from our fellow man, but all the mean while, fail to truly witness it a world created solely for us

God's love is so limitless, so profound, so deep and wide, so singular, so important, that to really think about it would bring the proudest man to his knees in utter awe of the thought that it's also so personal

You can't experience joy without it, it's the sweet flavoring of life that makes tragedy bearable

Love is a connection so unfathomably incomprehensible that we strive to make mentioning it a routine in order to survive the day

Unlike any other force in the universe it can tear a soul asunder, rip the heart right from our chest, and at the same time it's the only thing that can ever make us truly whole

No other gift could be so precious, no other feeling could be so breathtakingly stunning, no other desire so provocative as love

No matter what we tell ourselves, no matter what we've done, no matter where we've been, or no matter how far we've gone, Christ promises us that he will always unconditionally, unflinchingly, unchangingly, undeservingly, eternally love us for who we are

As the story of love is being continually written it makes each of us stop and ponder our role

Will we become beacons of God's love or a bitter example of a loveless life wasted?

Can we attempt to live up to the lofty ideals that Christ gave us for love or will we rather fall short of the intensity that love has the potential to hold?

It comes down to just this and nothing more, can we, knowing what God has done for us in writing the story of love, afford to take our names out of that book of life, by denying the existence of our creator and can we accept that we are worthy to be loved just as our neighbor is worthy of being loved?

In the end there is God, and God is love

Ephesians 3:16-19 I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.