Love’s Gaze: Lots of Jesuses All Around

The other day, I wrote about a young man I met when he was in a mentoring program I ran, who died last week as a result of gun violence. Later that same day, I had some suspicions confirmed about an old friend of mine — this person is deep into a drug habit that is creating complete chaos and ruin. This person has cut ties with the support system that could offer help, presumably out of shame, pride, and probably no small amount of really big attitude.

It got me thinking about how hard it is to be loved.

Yes, it’s hard to love. It’s especially hard to love like Jesus loved — to love the people who actively hate on us, or talk behind our backs, or conspire against us, or plot our brutal and gory demise. That’s hard.

But I think it’s even harder to just stand there and be loved, to stand in love’s gaze and not want to try to deflect it, or defend against it, or refuse it. I think that’s why the Gospel is so offensive to many people. Love’s gaze can feel heavy, until you realize you’re not the one who has to hold it.

I’m not talking about the world’s kind of love — the Kardashian sort that is conditional and superficial, that is less about the loved and more about the lover. Maybe I’m talking about the kind of love that most parents have for their children, or the kind that comes from a long time marriage, although both these kinds of love can get twisted. I’m definitely talking about the love of God, to which we can probably only aspire.

It’s a love that is dangerous for its intimacy. It’s hard to stand in the gaze of this kind of love because true love is not really blind at all. In fact, it has super X-Ray eyes that can shine a light on our every shortcoming, yet doesn’t abandon us because of them. In fact, its stare is steady.

It’s just this type of intimacy that God longs for with us. Isaiah 43:3 says

Because I am God, your personal God, The Holy of Israel, your Savior.

I paid a huge price for you: all of Egypt, with rich Cush and Seba thrown in!

That’s how much you mean to me!

That’s how much I love you!

I’d sell off the whole world to get you back,

trade the creation just for you.

The Message, emphasis mine

It sounds almost like a soap opera moment, an overly-dramatic declaration of love. Except this is the God of the Angel Armies, telling us he is our personal God, and we mean something to him.

That’s pretty heavy.

That’s a weighty gaze to stand beneath, to feel that love and try to hold it up.

Except Jesus.

Jesus came and made this love light with humility. He came to set us free from the heavy kind of love, the kind of love that weighs us down with guilt, so that we have to run and hide. It’s not the kind of love that takes advantage of our vulnerabilities. It’s not the kind of love that’s not safe.

But it can be super uncomfortable in how generous it is, in how forgiving, and how undeserving we are. Because a love this strong and pure makes you question and doubt — why would He love Me like that? Doesn’t he know about this, and that time when, and when I did that?

It’s the kind of love that sees straight through to the core of you, where any doubt you ever had about your value as a person lives. It sees past all your accomplishments, your failures, your defenses, what people think of you, what that nasty person said behind your back. It sees past all of that, right to your naked soul, that place where your light comes from, the place that gives your heart its beat.

It looks there, and all it sees is brilliant love and light where we see only failure. It sees our inherent worth beyond our actions — beyond the gang we belonged to, the gun we toted to the party, the drugs we take, the anger we spew, the people we’ve hurt. We can only see all of that — but God. God sees the light within each of us.

Maybe if we could learn to love like that — to look for the spark of light even in the people who are hurting us, the world would be such a different place. Can you imagine? If we looked for Jesus in everyone, how would our behavior change?

Would you serve the world differently if it was filled with lots of little Jesuses all around? Would your life take on new meaning?

Would you look in the mirror this time and see love’s gaze staring back at you?

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