'you will never stop looking for love...'

Originally published in the Brechin Advertiser 12 July, 2012

 
“If you don't receive love from the ones who are meant to love you, you will never stop looking for it.”   

― Robert Goolrick, The End of the World as We Know It: Scenes from a Life

One of my Facebook friends put this on his wall, but it took a while to sink in but I thought what a great thought. I know so many folk that are looking for love, and as the country song goes, “in all the wrong places.” And the truth is too many times we all are looking to be loved. I remind us again of the thought of John 3:16 about God loving the world so much that He sent Jesus to come and be our Saviour. There is as well that verse in 1^st John that says the God is love.

How often do we just not ‘feel the love’. It is one of my standing phrases I use when getting the worst end of a slagging off: “Boy I’m feeling the love” (said with very thick sarcastic tones). But often it is how we feel we don’t sense the love or express the love to others in a way that is felt. I know so many that have said: I know my Dad/Mum/(fill in yours) loved me even though they never told me. I hope my kids will never say that of me. 

I have managed to stay married now 29 years, I know that it is not because I am a perfect husband and Ruth sometimes has to remind me to tell her that I love her, not that she doubts it, she just says she likes to hear it. Well from my perspective we have made it so far because my Heavenly Father has demonstrated His love into my life in a way that I can duplicate at some level because I have experienced what it is like to receive love so I don’t have to look for it, I instead get to experience it.

Then the beauty is that since I have experienced a great love from one who is meant to love me it is no longer about spending my life looking for it but rather recognizing love when it is given. Sadly my humanity still gets in the way and I don’t perfectly recognize it like I’d like to. I have my 3 lassies I interact with, and well two are too much like me and not demonstrative when it comes to cuddling, so every now and again I remind them that ‘Daddies have to have cuddles to survive...’

So God loves us, that is good to know. But do we show our love into the lives of folk around us that need it? Have others we needed love from showed it to us? Perhaps since we are mere mortals and don’t do this as well as we should we are still looking for love? But perhaps we can also learn and do better and find great love from the right place and then we can become the one that shares that love so others don’t have to look for it forever. 

Here is to learning to love others,

Rev. Jon Bergen

A P.S. if you will... I have since gotten the book and the story while one that goes against many of my Christian values is a powerful story or perhaps that should be series of stories. It is a must read type book, but be prepared to have your heart broken, your sensibilities assaulted and  even shed tears at times for the author and even, as importantly, for the many others in this world that have been through similar or worse. These are stories of a man who was brutally raped (rape to my mind is always brutal) by his own drunken father and has been looking for genuine love ever since. I wish there was a way to share Jesus with him personally and I have prayed that while I am not in a place to do so, that God would be gracious and put someone loving into Robert's life to do so in the most amazing way possible.