To Love Well (Part Two)

(Read part one here)

I feel there is nothing more truly artistic than to love people. - Vincent Van Gogh

     If we are artists, what kind of artists are we? If we are Christ-lovers, what should we be known for? What do you want to be known for? If we believe our lives consist of more than what we create, do we dare to live that belief wholeheartedly? Do we dare to learn how to love well, even if that means the sacrificing of ourselves or our own comfort?

     It is when the lives of others are messiest that they desperately need us to walk beside them in silence for that stretch of broken road. It'd be easier for us to stand just beyond the splatter screen unaware of the darkness inside they battle with just like us. Somewhere safe where we don't have to know of the wars they rage against their own brokenness, and this brokenness -oh, we know it so painfully well. This brokenness looks a lot like us.

     And that hurts because we're repulsed by our own crippled limbs. We'd like to think we have it together or are somehow better, but we grow weary, too, and become too tired to fight, too discouraged to hope. We get torn down, and then we are most vulnerable to temptations, to those pesky little thorns which dig into our sides out of others’ view. And the weariness cripples our ability to fight. We succumb and hide our shame because we should know better, and we do, but we’re so tired. We're so broken. It hurts to see the same brokenness in another. How are we even capable of love, let alone some kind of artistic love?

      Although we are broken, we are far from useless. Somehow, with all our flaws, God can use us in unimaginable ways. He has this knack of making broken things beautiful, artistic even.

     For example, in a portion of Joni Eareckson Tada’s autobiography, The God I Love, she relates the events following an accident that left her a quadriplegic at 17-years-old. Joni spent many lonely hours in the hospital questioning God as she tried to wrap her mind around this new way of life.

     One night after visiting hours, a friend she never considered particularly ‘close’ to snuck in and spent the night with her. For those hours, she was able to forget where she was and what was happening. She was a normal teenager having a slumber party with her friend.

     In the grand scheme of things, the action might have seemed so small, but it wasn’t. Later when Joni was asked where the turning point was after her accident, she always pointed to that night and said it was the best thing a person could do for a paralyzed girl.

     I read that story, and I stopped. Could I be a friend like that? Could I be brave enough to be that close to someone’s hurt? Joni didn’t write that her friend tried to fix her sadness or tell her it was going to be all right. Joni wrote that her friend just laid beside her and sang, "Man of Sorrows".

      In the same situation, I would make so many excuses. Rules. I can’t break the rules. Maybe she doesn’t really want company. I even make excuses for my selfishness because of my unwillingness to drastically break routine. Or just because of fear. Fear of being that intimate with someone else.

     This depth of relationship isn't something that is just nice. God gave us friends specifically for these dark hours. In 1 Timothy 2:1 (NKJV), Paul writes: "Therefore I exhort first of all that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for all men."

     Intercession - that is such a strong word. It means we’re pleading for someone else. We're asking on behalf of someone else's soul, and those are the prayers all of us desperately need not just in the hardest places of life but every day.

     You know the first scene in It’s a Wonderful Life? It’s the one where the prayers of almost everyone in town are being sent up to Heaven on behalf of George Bailey. It may be just a fictional story, but I can’t think of a better picture of intercession than that.

     If we never open ourselves up to that kind of relationship to begin with, how will anyone ever know the sadness behind the offhanded, "If you could pray for me, that’d be great." Prayers are the very lifeline a person needs. There will be days when each of us will desperately need people to go before the throne of God, into the Holiest of Holies, on our behalf. That is nothing to be ashamed of.

     Some days we will be the ones whose hearts plead for someone to come and just sit beside us. Someone who won't tell us the things we already know deep down or try to say we shouldn't feel these things. Some days all we will need is for someone not to be afraid of our desperation, of our human brokenness. Other days we will be the ones interceding on someone else’s behalf. Or maybe we'll be the answer.

     And this is the artistic love. It isn't perfect, but it is trying. It's doing the things we find hardest. Being brave enough to expose our own brokenness in order to share in someone else's vulnerability. It's giving our time. It's fighting tooth and nails for someone else's very soul. And it's praying. It's stepping back from being right, taking credit, pulling the attention to ourselves in order to be a channel, albeit a leaky one, of God's perfect love. This is what makes a masterpiece.