Never Regret Giving Love
We should never regret having shown love toward anyone. Admittedly, unrequited love is one of the most painful feelings. It is very difficult to accept situations in which your love is not reciprocated or respected. Also, it is hard to see someone take you and your feelings for granted as if they deserved the fruit of your emotions, investment of your time, use of your resources and sacred space of your heart. Simply put, it hurts to realize that someone has trampled upon your feelings. Yet, the profound and mysterious act of sharing genuine love from the depth of your heart is never a waste.
God is love. The capacity to love naturally flows from the character of God. Without this divine and gracious gift to consider others instead of ourselves, we would remain self-centered. What a pitiful life to spend all of your time and energy in pursuit of personal satisfaction? How dreadful it would be, under the aegis of protecting ourselves, never to risk the possibility of knowing real love? In order to succeed, you have to be willing to fail. Likewise with love, unless you are willing to be hurt, you can never actualize genuine love in this life. Nevertheless, God graciously bestows the willingness to love. When we love, we are God’s instruments. It does not matter whether our love is returned or not.
God utilizes us as His chosen vessels to demonstrate His infinite love toward others. When people refuse our affections, they actually deny God’s love for them. Love relationships are a part of His plan to share His love with everyone. When we sincerely and freely offer our emotions and hearts to someone, we are mostly definitely and clearly allowing the love of God to flow through us. In the immortal words of St. Francis of Assisi, we are a channel of God’s love and peace.
Accordingly, I hope these thoughts will enable us to forgive those persons who have spurned our love in the past. They have not rejected us as much as they have denied the love that God offered them through us. Actually, all of us have been on both sides of unrequited love. We have discarded as much love as we have given. Nonetheless, love is never wasted because it is a part of God’s plan to provide inner healing and wholeness to everyone. In their brokenness and myopic self-centered fear, many people lack the wherewithal to appreciate genuine love. Quite simply, they do not know it because they do not possess the capability to ascertain its worth. As a consequence, they are not bad people. They are fractured people who ironically need the healing which genuine love affords. Instead of our condemnation, they deserve our continual prayers that they may find the love which God offers in Christ and personifies through primary relationships with significant others.
Unrequited love hurts so much because we erroneously look to other people to make us whole. Absolutely no one can make us complete. Inner healing and wholeness is a mysterious and divine process that emerges from an acknowledgement of God’s love for us. Psalm 139 captures the unfathomable love of God for us. We can never know peace and receive the love of others unless we humbly and genuinely grasp God’s unfailing love for us. People who rejected our love did so because they never knew God’s immense love for them. To know love, one must know God.
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