Loved

Love and hate . . . sinner and sinned against . . . we've been having a FB conversation about the tension (if any there be -- I land on the yes side of that equation) between love and admonition.  What follows is my ruminating on love and sin.  It is a would-be peacemaker's perspective.  What do you think, I wonder?  Is love more present in our challenges, admonitions, judgments, and condemnations?  Or in our understanding and compassion?  Must there be a choice?  Which are we better at?  I'm guessing we're really not very good at either most days and I wonder why that is.


Loved


Love – how disarming a thing
to behold in actual practice –
the sinner, the sinned against,
even the sin itself –  so ready for
the other thing – the admonition,
the condemnation, the judgment –
oh, sin is ever ready for those –
fully armed, protective vest donned –
no chink in the armor to be found –
but when love is lobbed instead,
it finds its target, for the sin
always somehow forgets to protect
the heart against the onslaught
of love

Taking my anger, my self-righteousness
taking all the slings and arrows in my quiver
disarms me completely and I am left not
bereft, not shamed, but filled – filled with
a new thing – there, in the hard place that
was my heart, something warm and
butter-melting finds its way in and
I  –  am  – changed –

love me, love me not
change me, change me not


____________
*Interestingly, in entering labels, I discovered that this is the first time I've used the label 'sin'.  Hmmm.