Holding Love
Description
I didn't grow up in the country, but my cousins did.
One time, while visiting my country cousins, we walked over to a large hole in the ground surrounded by large earth dams my uncle had pushed up with his tractor. The big hole was supposed to be a pond, but it was bone dry.
My cousin told me there was something wrong with it, that it wouldn't hold water. There was something about the ground that made water pour through the pond rather than stand in it.
Sometimes, my soul is like that.
Love pours through it, but for some reason, I’m not able to hold it. Whatever love is given to me quickly leaks away.
There’s a reason the Great Commandment has three loves in it—love for God, love for neighbor, and love for self. You literally can’t do one without doing all three.
Yes, it all starts with love for God. But if our souls leak, then we’re left with nothing for our neighbors or ourselves.
So, like my cousin’s pond, the problem isn't a lack of love, but our inability to hold the love that comes to us.
Without God’s healing, our souls just leak more and more, and when we leak, we demand more and more from those around us. Trying to pour love into a leaky soul is frustrating for everyone concerned.
So, here are the questions for today: do you really suffer from a lack of love, or do you just leak too badly to hold the love offered to you?