It all began when I started to walk through the still, cold, gray fog of apathy and joyless-ness. You know those days when the sky is completely overcast with flat, texture-less clouds and there's no wind or rain anywhere? Welcome to the world of apathy. You can't feel happy, or sad, or angry, because there's nothing to produce those emotions. No blue skies to conjure a cheerful euphoria, no rain to mirror your desire for tears, no thunderstorms to make you feel alive. Just flat. Still. Dull. It was from this state I was struggling to love people. My fairy-tale saturated mind had a difficult time conceiving the possibility that maybe it was possible to love without feelings?
Meet Cinderella. Equipped with fancy ballgown and sparkly shoes (that apparently have enough staying power to last a night's worth of dancing, but not a trip down the stairs?), off she goes to the ball, only to win Prince Charming's heart in a matter of hours. After a few set backs, they live Happily Ever After. This is the kind of love we would all have in our happy worlds. The mushy, head-over-heels, madly-in-love, swept-off your-feet type. Now for a tad more realism.
Meet Maud. (That's the most drudgery-worthy name I could think of. My apologies if your mother's name is Maud.) Maud doesn't meet Prince Charming, but she meets Prince Good-Enough and therefore settles. She cares for him merely in her actions- there is no feeling behind how she cooks breakfast. She just does it and feels it is enough to love him in her service, as long as life is peaceful and without swells.
Obviously, neither of these fictions are what love actually is. Usually, though, we tend to side with one view or another. My problem was very much wishing for Cinderella, but wondering if there was perhaps a more realistic realization in Maud? I use 'realization,' because you could hardly call Maud a dream. Let me stop for a second and traipse down a side road. Obnoxious as you may feel that to be, I hope it makes sense why in the end.
Is joy always a by-product of love? This was yet another question my friend and I were asking during our discussion. It was a frustrating one, because if the answer was 'yes,' we were both guilty of not loving, hence the current state of apathy. So I asked, "What happens when you just have to love someone purely in your actions because there is no feeling?" You know you are commanded to do so, so you keep pressing on in acting on what you hope will become love- with feelings this time. That joy should emanate forth from such a hard fact of life was a puzzle to me. I then considered the source of joy: in this case of loving the un-lovable with your actions, the motive behind it was obedience out of love. Love for who? We would not love if there were not a Higher Authority to fill us so full of love for Him that we can't help but to obey and love in return. Both God and others. And so, with Christ our Higher Authority, being the source of love, it follows that He is the source of joy.
Here I return to the only slightly-trodden path to conclude. We cannot love solely in feeling, we cannot love solely in deed. So what do we do when the other person's actions, or our own apathy, forces us to love only with actions? I would say we must learn to look beyond our own ability to love and look upwards, towards God- who is love. Once we have fixed our eyes on Him who loved us first and through His Son has granted us even the ability to love, we cannot help but have joy. We have that joy because of our love, and in that we can take joy in loving the unlovable because we know we are pleasing our Maker.
Meet Hannah. Currently pre-occupied with learning how to love other people, and not just herself. Armed with the knowledge that
'Could we with ink the ocean fill,
And were the skies of parchment made,Were every stalk on earth a quill,
And every man a scribe by trade;
To write the love of God above
Would drain the ocean dry;
Nor could the scroll contain the whole,
Though stretched from sky to sky,'*
she is able to pursue loving Christ, to pursue joy in Him. And delight in pleasing Him. For while there are lots of times when she doesn't want to love anybody, she is able for the joy set before her.
*"The Love of God" by Frederick M. Lehman
