The Hounds of Love

There is something of a weight that descends on many people when the love (charity, service) they give moves from a voluntary response to, ‘Do it, it’s your job”. I wonder if doctors find it easier to care for the sick once they retire from “doctoring”? I wonder if nurses feel more “nursey” when they have finished nursing?

There is a weight that comes with caring for those in your care. Parents feel it, husbands and wives feel it, as do doctors, nurses and the rest of us. Love makes demands. The hounds of love chase the conscience, calling us to take a risky and sometimes thankless step for the sake of others.

How does God want us to respond to the weight of responsibility that comes with caring for others? Is there a contradiction between love that comes from the heart and the command to love one another ‘freely’?

This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. (John 15:12)

Paul felt the weight of loving others in his care, but he did not see that weight as a thing to be avoided. He saw it as a thing to be endured for their sake.

Therefore I endure everything for the sake of the elect, that they too may obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus, with eternal glory. (2 Timothy 2:10)

For Paul, heartache and anxiety was not incompatible with true love. In fact, it was his love for others that often caused the anxiety he felt.

In 2 Corinthians 2:12, we learn that Paul was given an open door by God to preach the Gospel over in Troas. But his love for the church in Corinth (2 Corinthians 2:4) and the the anxiety over what might be happening to them was so great that he left a perfectly good work – a perfectly decent opportunity for evangelism in Troas –  in order to tend to the flock of God in Corinth.

We sometimes behave like the world, seeking and dreaming of a kind of love with no strings, and no cost. We find it easier to love when there is no call or expectation to love. We want to enjoy love in a free, uncommitted, or even irresponsible way, but we don’t want to bear the burden and responsibility that comes with loving others.

But true love is a great weight and a great risk at times. It’s a burden when we are told to care. Real love often means taking two steps on the water, not knowing whether we will sink or swim, but doing it just the same.

Jesus knew what it meant to bear the weight of love. It was the weight of His Father’s love for His children that brought Him into the world, and it was the weight of His love for us that nailed Him to the cross. It was painful. But He chose to do it, freely (John 10:18).

It was real love. Love, the weight of which, Paul says, will one day lead to an eternal weight of glory (2 Corinthians 4:17).

Love, the weight of which, Jesus now carries for those of us who struggle at times to love.

Augustine once said in prayer, “Give what you command O’ Lord, and then command whatever you will.” In other words, Augustine was banking on God and not himself to provide the power and the grace to fulfil God’s command to love.

For, where God supplies the grace to love, the burden begins to lift, and the joy that flows begins to fill the empty chair (Hebrews 12:2).