A Time To Love
2019 has started of on level 100 of adulting. Like every single day since this year started I’m looking for the pause button so I can lower the difficulty. After deputy parenting and managing a household for a whole month, I thought February would cut me some slack, but that aint happening either so I’m determined to write for the next hour regardless of what duties call for me.
This morning was one of my favourite kind of mornings, assembly morning. I don’t know why but there’s just a kick I get from ministering at schools, different from any other platform. They were a bit rowdy this morning until I told them we were going to talk about love, then I had their attention. I don’t know what it is with teenagers and relationships, but whatever it is, I’m just glad it got them listening.
There’s a truth I’ve been sitting with since last year about the subject: love is in a way confined to time.
“There is a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace.” Ecclesiastes 3:8
Not every season of your life is a time to love. I’m talking about romantic, passionate, sensual love - what the scholars term eros love (I write about the different types of love here). This is so because the strength of this love is of such a high dosage that you need to first have the infrastructure to handle it before you can expose yourself to it. This is why the beloved of Songs of Songs begged her friends not to awaken love until it so desired (see Songs of Songs 2:7). She too acknowledges that there is a time of which love should be aroused or awakened.
Love is described to be as strong as death, its passion as unyielding as the grave. It is also compared to a fire which cannot be quenched (see Song of Songs 8:6-7). The strength of love undermines reasoning, it pushes through the borders of resolve. The beloved in this book at one point wandered through the night searching for her lover. She was found by soldiers who beat and took her clothing (see Song of Songs 5:6-8). That wasn’t the end of it because she sent a message to those who would find him to tell him that she’s dying of love (like seriously???). This shows how one goes against reasoning and puts themselves in the line of danger because of the strong urge that love can impose. Some compromise their health and future, put their dreams on hold, severe family connections, literally risk it all, in the name of love.
To handle such love, one needs to be mature. It’s easy to limit this maturity to age when you’re talking to teenagers, but in all honesty, grown men and women have had their hearts broken and shattered others’ of whom they claimed they loved. The kind of maturity needed to contain love speaks to one’s development and growth in love (God). It’s a cliché I know, but we cannot escape it that if we are to love, we need to be taught, and who best to teach us than love Himself?
It fascinates me that even God’s love is placed in time.
“You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly…God demonstrates his own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” Romans 5:6-8
In saying that God loved us first, John explains that it was in this way that we learned to love, both Him and others (1 John 4:10-11). In loving us, God has taught us that love is best contained in a covenant (see Ezekiel 16:8). It is only within a covenant that love can be consistent; always protecting, always trusting, always hoping, always persevering, never failing (see 1 Corinthians 13:7-8) because love placed anywhere else is fickle and prone to alter.
In the month dubbed as the month of love, I’d like to propose to you to question your love. Are you developed enough to handle it? Do you have the required infrastructure to contain it? Are you prepared to give it as much as you are ready to receive it? Is it really the time for you to love?
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