On Crazy Love

The last movie I saw in 2012 was the film adaptation of Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables. I didn’t plan it that way, for it to be the last movie of the year but it turned out to be fitting. It is a story about the triumph of love, not romantic love but crazy love, the love we receive when we haven’t earned it, when we least deserve it, when we hardly expect it. This is the kind of love that makes a life pivot on its axis and transforms ordinary moments into glimpses of God and ordinary people into ordinary saints.

And I wept like a fool throughout most of the film because that kind of crazy love is heart-wrenchingly beautiful and pierces a primal center in me. It is love borne out of a heart in which God’s rhythm beats louder than the aching chant of life’s pain and injustice.

I cannot imagine a better story to end an old year and begin a new one. If we believe in the triumph of love, holy, beautiful, grace-filled, merciful love then some aspects of our own stories have to change. Such belief only has room for some things and not for others.

In the story of triumphant holy, beautiful, grace-filled, merciful love there is no room for fear.

There is no room for fear of rejection because crazy love has already claimed you.

There is no room for fear of failure because crazy love has already deemed your life wholly necessary.

There is no room for fear of scarcity, of there not being enough because crazy love has already decreed that it will always give, especially when we least expect it.

There is no room for fear of judgment because crazy love has already said there is nothing that cannot be forgiven and no one that cannot be redeemed.

There is no room for fear of losing time because crazy love has already said everyday brings an opportunity for a new decision or action.

But in the story of triumphant holy, beautiful, grace-filled, merciful love there is always room for kindness, the sort that makes you weep because of its depth and it’s simplicity.

There is always room for gentleness, with our words and our actions. Even when it seems the harder blow might speed things along.

There is always room to choose what leads to life flourishing in both well-lit and dark places.

There is always room to continue trusting that crazy love.