The Greatest of All

I think that love is the hardest. I don't love well. I don't love the Malians like I should, I don't love God like I should, I don't love the team like I should, I don't love His Word like I should. Maybe because love gives someone else the power to deeply wound me, or maybe because it's hard for me to love myself. I have unlimitted access to love and I rarely tap into it. Sometimes I don't want to. I like seeing people as unloveable, I like to feel like I am suffering because of them. When really, I'm the one causing the problems, the bitterness, the anxiety- because I am not living in love. I'm not even acknowledging the need for its presence. In my mind I declare people unworthy of my love, of my heart and time and emotions. And then it moves from a love issue to a pride issue. I'm so proud of who I am and I elevate my spirituality and my maturity. Of course those people can't appreciate me or understand me- I'm farther than them. And right when I get puffed up to that point, God crushes me.

This trip has been hard. Maybe the hardest thing I've ever done. And God has taken me places that I never wanted to go. He's put me in situations I never thought I would be in. And when push comes to shove, when I am stripped down to my real self, I'm an ugly person. I fail every day. I am the chief of sinners, my righteousness is filthy rags. You'd think that I'd just learn the lesson and get it over with. It's such a simple lesson; it's such a hard lesson. Love.

Sometimes I'm tired of loving, tired of living in love, by love, for love. I mean, honestly? Do we even really know what that means? I'm becoming more and more convinced that love is life. It's not some fuzzy day of the year celebrated with hearts and candy and it's not candlelight and roses. Love is Jesus born among animals, it's Him devoting His life to twelve men, it's Him with Mary, Him and Zaccheaus, Him beaten and hanging on the cross. Love is a powerful, dangerous thing. It's what drives us. It has the power to devastate and destroy. It has the power to redeem and save. But we've taken this untamed force and defined it, boxed it, controlled it. Love is now the color red, it's kisses and holding hands, it's used to describe clothes and hair styles and chocolate. We throw it around like it's ordinary, like it's common. And then we take away it's meaning. We take away it's power. And love becomes not so remarkable. Love becomes a cliche, a nail polish color, a bumper sticker. And when love- real love- is forgotten and underestimated, then the reality of the cross is forgotten, the reason behind who we are and what we do is forgotten. And slowly, we lose who we are. Our memory of what love has done fades and our passion wanes. What was lavished on us by God and what we are called to live in and by slips away and we are left with our cheap love- the love that we have created. Love that isn't even love at all. It's just an imitation, a joke. But that is what we learn to be satisfied with; that's what we try to give to people- this unexciting, unattractive gaudy gift. No wonder the world doesn't notice us. We traded something spectacular for the common. And then we become like everyone else.

The thing is, His love isn't natural for me. For humanity. Because His love is foolish- it just doesn't make sense. So every minute it's a choice. Ok Tasha, what are you going to be right now? And sometimes I don't know what love looks like and I don't know what to do with people, what to do with myself. Sometimes I want to go home to my family, to my parents. I want them to tell me what to do, to tell me how to do it. But part of me doesn't want to. I need the rest of my time here. God isn't done using Africa yet. I have so far to go. Sometimes I think I'm there and then God allows something to happen and it's like He's saying to me again- do you really understand love? Really?