Simple and Complex
November 7, 2009 // By: Bob Hamp // 5 Comments
The Story is simple. The Story is of Ultimate Love expressed fully. What makes it complex is the details. How would perfect love be perfectly expressed? To whom would it be expressed? Like every simple story, it would call for a storyline, a stage, a context and characters. It is the fact that we are the recipients that makes the story complex.
Perfect Love Perfectly Expressed involves The Great Lover, all-knowing, with all-power, and the most fragile and weak beloved. For great Love to be great, it must not depend on the recipient. In fact, love is expressed in it’s fullest when the Lover overcomes obstacles to loving. Great Love is finds it’s fullest expression when the Lover loves in the face of more than just obstacles but love-less-ness. When the recipient abandons, wounds, and betrays, and The Great Love overcomes…now Great Love is finding it’s deepest expression.
When Great Love pursues and restores the beloved, now it is finding it’s strongest voice. When Love heals, and pays a great price to regain the beloved, this is Love.
No greater love exists, Jesus told us, than the kind of love that will compel a man to lay down his life for another.
The Story is simple. Perfect Love Expressed. It is us… messy, complex, stubborn, humans that make it so complex. To be loving is relatively simple…to love me…well this is harder. You have to know me, pursue me, overcome my frailty, and be willing to be hurt by me. To be loving is generic…to love the world, and the billions of individuals who inhabit it…Now we begin to see The Story.
5 Comments
So it’s kind of invading the kingdom of darkness with HIS love. I would like to learn to love like He does, Agape kind of love. I guess by searching Him..I will find the strategies. Thanks Ps Bob.
I love this. I use to write poetry, that was my old habit while living alone in Miami.
I remembered all of a sudden, and then came back to read this post of yours. I melted a little. It’s good to read this post like twice or more to get the real picture. Thanks Bob.
Simply amazing yet so hard to understand. My prayer lately has been to truly know how much He loves me. To get just a little understanding of how deep His love is for me. When I was born my parents named me Amy and that means Beloved and friend to all…and decades later I am cherishing that name because everytime I read Beloved in the Bible it is that much more personal to me.
Thanks!!! This becoming “who I was created and redeemed to be” is so much fun!!!
“To be loving is relatively simple…to love me…well this is harder. You have to know me, pursue me, overcome my frailty, and be willing to be hurt by me.”
Well put…’nuff said cuz I can’t add to that.
Bob, I just read this morning how the blood of Jesus cried out for mercy while the blood of Abel cried out for vengence. (Heb 12 AMP) Our OT nature cries out for vengence when we are hurt or betrayed but the NT nature cries out for mercy. WOW! Thanks for bringing this to life, now may I learn to live it out.