Here’s the first excerpt from my page: The heart of a kiwi Christian: a personal journey Feel free to leave comments on this blog post.
I’ve decided to write a personal journal. Why? Because my heart is being changed.
It’s quite a journey, life! There are ups and downs, struggles, battles – the deepest battles sometimes are within our own hearts.
I’ve found an ally in that kind of warfare: a powerful ally, so I’ve found – so I’ve experienced, to the depths of who I am.
There are times in our lives when we find great treasure – and we can’t help but want to pass that treasure on. Jesus Christ has become that treasure for me: the pearl of great price! The taonga.
I want to make that treasure known.
Come: join me! Find out who this person is! Let me share how Jesus has made my life, and my heart, so much better.
18/2/17 The best things in life cost our all.
There is a saying that the best things in life are free. The idea here is that we need to pay money for treasures like pearls, or diamonds, while more important than these is love: and love is for free. But is love really for free? They say true love is unconditional: but is true love really unconditional?
I’m not talking about a kind of love that expects results: a parental love, say, that is only given if the child succeeds, or a romantic love that is only given on payment of sex. The idea of unconditional love says no to these: a good parent will love their child irrespective of their achievement; a good partner will love even in the absence of sexual pleasure. But there is a higher kind of love than this: a higher calling into Love that requires the payment of a price in order for it to reach its true realization.
Jesus is calling us into that kind of Love.
Are the best things in life for free? No: the best things in life demand our all. A parent staying up all night for a sick child. A spouse remaining sexually faithful with an incapacitated mate. True love sacrifices: true love costs. And, in response to paying the right and necessary price, true Love beckons for us to do the same in return.
This is what Jesus means, when he says, ‘Take up your cross and follow me.’ He offers his life to save our souls: to carry our darkness, our flaws, our human frailty – but does it end there? It does not. Love beckons: ‘I’ve done this to show you what real Love is: now, go and do the same. Be like me.’
‘Take up your cross and follow me.’
Love costs. Love demands. Love beckons us to be more than we are.
The best things in life cost our all.
Thinking about this, I’d say the unconditional bit of “unconditional love” lies in the behaviour of the beloved: A mother unable to un-love a son, say, a convicted and actual murderer; her love, in this instance, being unconditioned. Other that this, yes I think all true love is definitionally massively conditional being better understood as a form of slavery.
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