"Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted."
God loves us best when we are at our worst, I think. Not that God's love actually alters or or is at times better than others. But I'm suddenly getting this vibe, if you will, that He loves to comfort us. And so His love is at it's finest when we are at our worst. I think. I mean, after all, He sent His son to die for us when we were absolutely at our worst. The whole, "rarely will a man die for a righteous man" thing, so woah-ho-ho, say what, you're dieing for a WRETCHED man? Yeah. I dunno, that one Rob Bell video where he's going through the storm in the woods with his baby son comes to mind.
Being made in the image of God, it occurs to me that we, also, can love another human the best when they are hurting. Also, in turn, we can experience the love of someone else in a profound way when we are hurting.
Vulnerability. It's a scary thing. At least, in our society of "keep it together, never let 'em see you sweat - let alone shed a tear or punch a wall" and such. But we've got these ideas in our heads that if we have problems, if we're not perfect, if we don't meet a particular standard that makes us "good enough," if we're hurting, if we have struggles or ugly secrets or brutal scars or flaming wounds ... that we're unworthy of being loved. When that is the total opposite. That is when we are the most lovable! But unfortunately that is when we tend to close ourselves off and fear rejection the most. We get stiff. The part in "Approaching God" by Steve Brown about "it's easier to hug a dirty kid than a stiff kid" applies here. It's never the dirtyness that makes us unlovable, it's the stiffness. The shutting down. The putting up walls. The facade of stoicism. We're afraid that the "real us" is repulsive. But I think that's a lie from the devil to keep us trapped in an existence that is less than whole, less than healthy, and less than our full potential. It keeps us from opening up and experiencing the reality of love, healing, and overcoming.
I might be going a bit utopian here, of course... It's not accurate to say that humans always love each other perfectly. We're not God, merely made in His image, and we're fallen at that. Many times people are repulsed by the real us and we are, in turn, repulsed by the real them. It's hard to not be mutually repulsed at each other's imperfections at times. It's hard to love someone else while you're struggling yourself. That seems rather a hopeless cycle, I know. But then, there's God. Get real before yourself and God. Stop being stiff before Him. Let Him see you dirty (psst: He has already seen you dirty anyway so it's pretty useless to pretend that He hasn't). Experience a Love so perfect, portent, and pure that it binds up wounds, turns deserts into pools of water, and makes ceder trees grow in formerly barren lands, and you will start to heal. In turn, the walls will come down and you will be better not only to experience human love, but to spread the love. You will better be able to love others at their worst and help them find healing. And so on and so forth.
The irony of being most lovable at our worst ties in with another irony: loosing something to find it. We have to loose our "keeping-it-togetherness" in order to truly get it together. To be confident and strong we have to first be helpless and weak. Our ideas of how to survive have to die before we can thrive in new-found life. The "peacefulness" of shoving down our emotions and never letting ourselves feel pain or anger or whatever has to die an uncomfortable death (in other words, we have to go through a brutal storm of feeling all those things bottles up inside) before we can find a true peace. The peace the grows from the LOVE that floods into our lives when we are at our worst. Because God loves us best when we are at our worst.
And rather than be like Lambchop and start a whole "this is a song that never ends" sort of thing, I will stop here.
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