This is a meditation on chapter 12 from our Way of Life.

Love your Neighbors as Yourself.

There are many ways that I’ve learned about love, and how to love. There are the examples of people that loved me well. There are the stories I grew up reading and hearing. In my time in University I received a more clinical understanding of love, relationships, family dynamics, and of human sexuality. I have also learned about love within the longings and brokenness of my own heart.

As a teenager, I attempted suicide twice. I’ve come to learn a lot about myself in the decades since. I’ve long become grateful that those two moments were only attempts. Yet, I can close my eyes and be transported back to each of those moments. They are seared into my mind forever. With my eyes closed, I can still taste and feel my despair and hopelessness. The days and years that followed were difficult. I had to learn a lot about myself and how my body works. There was one thing that I long felt, but only began to understand. I could learn about love from the longing and brokenness I have come to know all too well.

It is here, mingling with my despair, that I realized I was not the only one. I couldn’t be the only one. As I let myself pray and dream of the love I longed for, I began to embody that love. I found ways to weave kindness and gentleness into my interactions with friends, peers, and strangers. This helped me realize that we can learn to love from both examples and from our unmet longings. As I began with these expressions of love in high school, I was still years away from extending this love to myself. I simply didn’t want others to feel the full brunt of despair I was living with. Loving others didn’t make me feel more loved, but I did see it making a difference to them.

Discovering how to love myself would take many more years. It was hard to see myself, and to realize that God was being kind and tender with me when I couldn’t with myself. I could bring joy to others, but most of my life was joyless. Decades after high school, I can now – in my good moments – rest into the love of God. It is tender, gentle, and ever so kind. There is a bottomless depth to Jesus’s love for me. There are endless facets to every part of love God continues to show me, and teach me. I long to live within and through God’s love.

I used to think that the right ideas paired with the right plan & execution could change the world. Now I believe the bible when it says that these three remain: faith, hope and love; but the greatest of these is love.

Photo Credit
Paul Prins on 16 August 2024 in Paris.