I could provide the details of the situation but it wouldn’t really matter anyhow. Next week the details will change.
I get frustrated at having to deal with the people in my life sometimes. Even my typed words smoke of arrogance, wreak of pride. Real people, real souls, that I have to deal with.
Sad.
I tend to sort them out transactionally, detach myself when things get messy and I ask why. Why does it have to be this way?
With a bowed head, but a heart crusted over, I present my requests to God.
God, why can’t she just be rational? It makes no sense to behave this way. I was kind, thoughtful even. And then this. It makes no sense.
Why can’t he be fair? It’s obvious I’ve done more than my share. I’m stressed and maxed. Can’t he just do his part?
It’s not even my fault, God. She is difficult. Emotional. Illogical. I’m over it.
I’ve prayed these prayer far more times that I care to admit. I try to squeeze my situations into a sieve of logic, haplessly tossing whatever won’t drain through.
Her emotions? Not logical. Neediness? Not logical. Those demands, that ignorance, her brokenness? Sorry, not logical.
I straighten my back, stand a little taller, as I pour prayers out into my own warped scales (Proverbs 11:1). It’s so obvious I’m winning here.
But when I quiet my bargaining, I finally hear him. One simple question. He knew that is all it would take.
What about my love is logical, Katie?
There are none righteous, no, not one (Romans 3:10).
Righteous-er is not a word. Imagine that? I have convinced myself that it is. Not literally – because spell-check – but in deed, in prayer, in my heart.
What a corroded mess I’ve made in here – receiving love and pouring it out in weights and measures. Checking my dosage. Prescribing only in logic.
I am the unforgiving servant in Matthew 18, a receiver of grace far greater than I can, and sometimes even wish to, comprehend and yet I turn around and impose limitations based on my finite and so very limited logic.
The other day a woman poured out her heart to me. She told stories I had never heard from a life I have never lived. She spoke of rejection I have never experienced and wounds that left gaping scars. Her story, her history, was so different than my own.
And while truth is always truth, our view of it comes in through different lenses. Hers and mine, they’re different.
How can I preach logical reactions when I don’t have the same scars, my view isn’t embedded in same very real history?
When we demand that love is logical then we demand that love is administered based on our own experience and understanding.
But God’s love is never logical. His death, his sacrifice for an ungrateful and forgetful people – for me – makes no sense whatsoever. And this is the love that we are asked to, by his grace, pour out.
Instead of meting out love and begging God to make the rest of the world abide by our logic, some better questions, better conversations, better prayers, sound something like this:
God how do you see her? Give me your heart for the people around me – for him, her, them. Replace my heart of stone with a heart of flesh, a heart more like yours. How can I love like you, Lord. Show me, teach me, change me as I lean not on my own understanding, but on your brilliant example. Let my love, like yours, defy logic and speak wildly of You.
In a warring world, where arguments seem unending. In a difficult marriage where differences seem to be around every corner. With tough friends and complicated families, unyielding children and co-workers that feel like sandpaper let’s pray for a love that defies logic. I’m convinced it makes a world of difference.
I was praying this morning for this very shortcoming in my life. That the walls in my life could be knocked down, even though I may not agree with or understand the next ones behaviour. To see myself more clearly. And then I opened your email….and WOW…Thank you…you have touched me through your own struggle you put into words. Thank you for bravely sharing. Pray for me.
God is so good to meet us with words right when we need them, isn’t he? Though this concept is simple, Shirley, it most certainly is not always easy. Praying for you this morning. <3
Katie, this is such a good post! I needed to hear this today. My husband actually teaches Logic, so you can well imagine, it drives him crazy when things don’t add up. One day I finally said to him, “Mark, stop trying to make sense of it. It doesn’t make sense.” He told me that was the most freeing thing he had heard in a long time. Ha, ha. We live with so much brokenness, our own and others, it is only by His grace that we ever make any sense. Thanks for sharing your thoughts. – Amy
http://stylingrannymama.com/
Thought provoking post. Love is not logical. Nothing about it is. But yet, my heart hardens quickly. Thanks for pointing out something that is hidden in plain sight.
My heart hurts at how short I fall in this area!! God’s love is so good and so full of grace and absolutely illogical-thank you for both the conviction and the cure to show that we can love like He does, if we will let Him live in us and change us. Thank you Katie for your words, and for being a vessel that the Lord can use. This encourages me to pray for a love like Jesus’. xoxo
This is the exact issue that I have been grappling with over the summer. God has been showing me that I need to love in the way that he loves, to pour out grace in the way that he pours grace. I’m only just starting to see it, and your article is just what I needed to read. I’ve read it three times already just to try to get those truths to sink a little deeper into my heart. God bless you Katie!
How sweet is it that He can connect us across the miles, as he is teaching us the very same thing? I love that! Thank you for sharing, Katharine.
Thank you so much for these words, Katie. They are so true and so needed to be spoken. Our concern should not be centered around how someone is or does but centered on seeing them as Christ does and aiming to minister to them where they are.
It is so easy to focus on the “is” and “does”, isn’t it Fran? Thank you for your kind words.