okay. i am in love with this stuff christians like blog. clearly to the point of piracy. seriously though. i read the first part of this and i was like, oh wow. thats a super powerful statement. then i read the rest of it. and i was like, holy cow. this is so so amazing.

An act of love is amplified exponentially when it is given in response to an act of hate.

Have you ever thought about that? Have you ever thought that the greatest time to send the loudest message of love is when someone has given you a message of hate?

It's kind of counterintuitive, but it's true. When someone hates you, when someone hurts you, when someone gossips about you or steals from you, they open up this deep chasm between the two of you. They dig a canyon's worth of emotional distance, a gorge of separation that feels impossible to span.

Logic would tell you to step back from the edge of that gorge.

Rational thinking would tell you to move away from someone that is actively digging such a deep, painful expanse between where you stand and where they stand.

Reason would tell you that it's probably impossible to ever cross that distance. That years and years must pass before you can even stand on the edge and stare off into the distance at someone far away from you.

But love isn't bound by logic and ration and reason.

Love doesn't play fair and neither does God.

He calls us to love our enemies. He calls us to love the people that are far away from us. He calls us to love the difficult and the sick and the jerks. (I'm not sure if the word "jerk" is in the Bible, but I'm trusting that the Message version has it at least once.)

And the weird thing, is that I think He calls us to do that is precisely because it's the loudest way to show His love.

When you bridge a gap with love, when you step across a chasm that might have existed for decades in your family, you create a bridge that can be seen for miles and miles, generations and generations. Step out and love a close friend that's bruised your feelings and you've created an overpass on a small creek. Jump out and love an enemy that's deliberately and destructively tried to hurt everything you stand for, do you know what you do when you love that person? You create a connection that will put the Golden Gate Bridge to shame.

oh lord. yes. even if someone does something unthinkable. even if someone hurts you, your child, your friend, your family in ways that could ruin their lives. even if someone lies, steals, takes innocence, murders. even when love is the hardest thing to give. it's the only thing we're called to give relentlessly.

if that means i'm living in a fantasy world, i'm living there with christ. and that's fine with me.