We love because he first loved us.*
"I want you to want me, I need you to need me, I'd love you to love me and I'm begging you to beg me..." as I listened to those lyrics the other day on the radio I began to think about how much of life is focused on "me", also, I wondered about how despite the desperation and controlling nature of the lyrics there is a truth to the longing described in this song. Being wanted, needed, loved, desirable appears to be a good thing, so to speak. I started thinking about each of the words and what they were really asking. Want. Need. Love. Beg. Without much debate the one most valuable to myself -and I expect all people- is love. I believe we all have a spot in our hearts that can only be satisfied by true love (not romantic love). The song tries to fill that spot with a persons actions and responses... including something called love, but I don't believe that any person could adequately fit or fill that spot.
I also wonder if maybe it's all backwards, what if instead of it all being about what someone else can do for us, life is rather about what we can do for others! :o Maybe, we are loved in order to better love others, and blessed to be a blessing, and cherished to cherish others, and valued to value others: the things that are most precious once they are given away. want, need and beg don't fit that category, but love does.
Which brings about another question, -at least for me- why on earth would anyone love me? What have we done that deserves that? I think the song recognises that there is a contradiction in what we want and what is realistic that is why it is all a desperate wish that the singer has. There is an insecurity that the love might not be shown and so it is demanded. We have a desire to be wanted, but why? and what brings us to assume that that is something we can even ask for? is it innate in us to want these things?
People cannot love perfectly, we stuff up, are selfish, forgetful, unrealistic, demanding, manipulative. But that doesn't mean we should give up hope, we are still called to love one another, and when we fail to keep trying. In the old testament it says, "I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you."** This isn't a human claim or promise, but one from God. His love is everlasting, he continues to be faithful.
“Go again, love a woman who is loved by another man and is an adulteress, even as the Lord loves the children of Israel, though they turn to other gods and love cakes of raisins.”****
Everyone has fallen short of loving perfectly, even those God has chosen, they are forgetful and lazy and selfish and seek pleasure and satisfaction elsewhere. God however has not given up, does not give up, will not give up. He keeps on loving and forgiving. He keeps on seeking and restoring relationships. He loves perfectly because he has dealt with the horrible things we have done, which are so unworthy of love. Jesus came down to earth, willingly took on our failures and bore it to death on a cross, and rising to new life He proved that death and all other failings no longer have ultimate power. Love is amazing, in God we find unconditional love, that is the kind of love that satisfies. And it is the kind of love that transforms. Knowing God's love for me, I can go out and love others. Remembering how unworthy I am on being loved, I seek to forgive and restore relationships not crush them. I am loved to love others. We are all loved first by God, so that we can love others.
*1 John 4:19
**Jeremiah 31:3
*** John 3:16
****Hosea 3:1
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