Why on earth would God want to be in relationship with people like me who are so messed up? That's what I'm trying to figure out. Perhaps it's because we are so messed up. God has it all together, and could have just stayed separate from the world, didn't have to bother with us after we rejected Him. But He saw us suffering as a result of our selfishness and knew this would eventually lead us to destruction in one way or another. So He had compassion, and wrote Himself into our story to offer a way out. He didn't have to experience suffering or pain or sorrow or loneliness of any kind - but He chose to, to enter into our human experience. That's love. And He offered us a relationship with Him, through which He can start the work of redeeming the messed up things in our world and in our hearts and show us another way. That's love.
And I think that God has built into the core of our beings a deep desire for relationship, for community, for Communion. It's meant to be with Him and meant to draw us to Him, but we often get distracted and seek to fulfill it in other ways. I find myself drawn to the people in my life, close friends and the community God has blessed me with, to fill this heart-desire. There is something so beautiful about knowing and being known, loving and being loved, just as you are. Yet whatever human relationships we have can never quite do that completely. We will always be limited by our selfish tendencies, and it will never quite be enough - it cannot quite fill that relational void inside our hearts. Only God can. I often forget this, and God constantly has to remind me that the people and the community He has blessed me with are not the be-all end-all - and elevating them as such only sets up unfair expectations and creates frustration.
Human community is a reflection of the Communion God has for us, but it's not it. Only God's perfect Love can fulfill our deepest relational desires, and dispel all of the insecurities and ugliness that hide in the corners of our hearts. When my heart is filled with the Love of God, it can't help but overflow into my relationships with people, and I can share it freely without expecting an exact return. However, when I don't allow my heart to be filled by God, I can approach my relationships out of that lack, and greedily draw from others to satisfy my needs.
The neat thing is, that living in God's Love has implications for everything. Not just how I love my friends, but how I interact with strangers and how I do my work and how I dream about the future and how I live in the present. My prayer right now is that God would be teaching me how to live in His Love every single day.
