Faith and Hope... and Love...

Hebrews 11:1 "Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see..." Okay, this has been a challenge for me. I'm a tangible kind of person. Okay Okay, I'm a skeptical kind of person. I don't blindly trust anybody. Barely trust many and don't believe in much. I want to examine things, touch them, add the up, and measure them, before I stamp my approval on them. Not so easy to do with things we can't see. Beth Moore in "Believing God" defines hope as Anxious Expectation. I'm realizing that you can't anxiously expect anything if you live in disappointmentville. What I mean is that you can't really be hoping and waiting and expecting and being sure of things to come if you are stuck in the frustration of the things we don't have yet. I'm not really talking about material things like enough money, or clothes or food, though I guess these things could apply. In my life its more a state of peace that I covet. A sense of security, safety, belonging. A sense of love and being loved.... Which brings me to love....
1st Corinthians 13 4 Love is patient; love is kind. Love does not envy; is not boastful; is not conceited;5 does not act improperly; is not selfish; is not provoked; does not keep a record of wrong 6 finds no joy in unrighteousness, but rejoices in the truth;7 bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.8 Love never ends.
This isn't exactly a new scripture to me, or to you I'll bet. I mean, even hallmark has exploited this one. But when's the last time you looked at it? I mean really looked at it. Who can really do that? In a society where we are taught to protect and cover ourselves, to look out for number one, and make sure we get our needs met, how do we love selflessly? How do we always love patiently and kindly, how do we keep from fault finding and recording? If love bared all things, and endured all things there wouldn't be so much divorce. I tried to look up the stats on divorce and see what the numbers actually were, but I got depressed before I could figure it out. I will say on a brighter note, due to the poor economic situation of our country more and more people are staying together because they can't afford to divorce.

Sorry- I bunny trailed there. But seriously 1 Corinthians 13:13 Says that out of Faith, Hope and Love the greatest of these is love. (Probably because God is Love 1 John 4:16)But can we really love without Hope or Faith? I mean really love. I suggest that the things that hinder us from loving well are our hurts, and our fears of being hurt and disappointed when we make ourselves vulnerable to love. We self protect, seek to meet our own needs for fear someone else won't meet them. Keep track of the wrongs that have been done to us, so that our case for loving poorly is made stronger by their faults. I suggest that since God is love, He's the only one that can love us the way we deserve and desperately need to be loved. The dichotomy in this is that because of our experiences with other people, God bears the brunt of our frustration and disappointment, and we use our hurts to distance ourselves from the only one who can truly heal them.

I think I am learning that even though it will be impossible for me to love perfectly, my only hope of loving well is to receive the love I need from God, and stop expecting other people and things to meet those needs. When I am sure of my anxious expectation to receive love from Him, maybe I'll be able to love well more of the time.

Well, that and I'm abandoning my dwelling place in disappointmentville and resuming my journey towards Anxious Expectation...