Love Is A Choice

If there's anything I've learned these past few months, through all the trials and heartache I've both experienced and witnessed, it's simply that you can't make someone love you. All of your efforts, whether they are of purest intentions or laced with manipulation, can not sway an unchangeable heart. You can try to cling with all your might to the one you love, only to find them pulling even further away, or you can back off hoping they will freely make a choice only to find that your absence has only led them to a choice without you in it. I always believed that of all things, commitment would guarantee love. Yet it turns out that even commitment is often nothing more than an empty promise. It is still unfathomable to me how one can stand before God, family, friends, and the beloved one they are about to marry, speaking the words "for better or for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, til death do us part" only to turn and run when things start to difficult, when they find that they must not only put away selfishness but also allow their heart to be forever and continually changed.

So many times I find myself saying "you fool." How could you treat someone who so selflessly loves you, who relentlessly pursues you, encourages you, and cares so genuinely for not just your heart, mind, or body, but even your very soul...how could you treat them with such disrespect, dishonor, contempt? It is so easy for me to judge, yet when I look at my own heart I am no longer blinded as to how someone could behave in such a way when I, as the bridegroom of Christ, so often treat the One who sacrificed Himself for me with that very same contempt. How many times has He pursued me, and how many times have I built a wall around my heart to keep Him out? How many times has He spoken to me, and how many times have I turned a deaf ear? How many times do I myself love him only on the conditions of "for better, for richer, and in health," turning to run at the first sign of hardship. He works only for my benefit, He died to set me free, and yet I so often choose to stay enslaved to the very sins that destroy me. No, I am no different than she. I am just as guilty, and just as in need of forgiveness. We all are.

I mourn at the sinful state of the world. He is the only one in the world who purely, unconditionally, passionately, relentlessly, and unselfishly loves us...the ONLY ONE, and yet we constantly pursue everything but Him. We look for such a love in another human being---in a lover, a father, a friend---only to be disappointed, because a flawed individual cannot offer such a flawless love. What a tragedy our hearts are. How He must weep at our sinful state. How heartbroken our God must be to have given so much out of love and received so little in return. Yet praise God that He is merciful, that no matter how many times we turn our backs on Him, His forgiveness is ever present to us if we merely ask it. What a fallen, selfish people we are, yet what a good, merciful God we serve. Praise God that our salvation rests not upon who we are or what we do, but solely upon who Jesus is and what He has done for us. If it were any other way, we would be hopeless.