Sunday, April 29, 2012

Tara Thompson - Outside Reading #4


“There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket - safe, dark, motionless, airless - it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.” 

Honestly this quote from C.S. Lewis’ Four Loves hits home for me right now. It is one of the most vulnerable things for one to love, and love fully at that. For me, it is easy to love in an unromantic way. I love my friends, I love people I’m in ministry with, and it has been really easy for me to forgive them when I’ve been hurt. However, loving romantically and forgiving in that sense has become something that is incredibly difficult for me to do. Being hurt in that sense is probably one of the scariest things I can think of. This quote is extremely convicting and challenging though. I don’t want to lock anything up deep in a casket. God has given us the power to love and has given us the example of Christ and the Church to do it. That is a beautiful thing and I so badly want the chance to have that. Scary or not, Lewis hit the nail on the head with this quote. 

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