love light

There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.
-1 John 4.18a

It is interesting that our desire for Love can be as strong as our fear of being loved. In our deepest parts, we know we crave Love–that unadulterated stream of light which we suspect could pierce through our shadowed layers and touch us at the core. And yet, when Love begins to glimmer before us, threatening to burst like fireworks, we recoil in fear and trepidation. We question whether we deserve, or even want, such illumination. We discover that the very glow of Love that can banish our soul’s darkness and emptiness is the same light that can accentuate the rough edges and scandalous caverns of our being. How we covet the former with the same passion with which we evade the latter!

We can make the mistake of stopping there–in that place where we are so close and yet so far–and then start retreating. For just as we begin to delighfully bask in the first rays of Love’s light, we also find ourselves blushing, ashamed of our highlighted imperfections.

What we don’t realize is that if we hold our ground a bit longer, endure the discomforts of this new brightness before us and the ugliness it unveils; if we allow Love to intensify its glow, then we’ll find that Love can and will do the unthinkable: In its own time, Love will radiate a river of powerful, omnidirectional brilliance that will engulf all our shadows–from the grays of our doubts to the deep blacks of our transgressions–leaving only pure, pulsating white in its wake.

Now, this is the kind of Love we must seek; the kind of Love that we should courageously abandon ourselves to! Not the whimsical flicker of infatuation, nor the offensive beam of selfishness disguised as affection. This Love, in its truest and purest, can only shine on us from an otherworldly Source.

Every perfect gift comes…from the Father of lights
who does not change like shifting shadows.
-James 1.17

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Thoughts sparked by candid conversations by the Manila Bay and at an office corner.