What's Forever For?

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So what's the glory in living?
Doesn't anybody ever stay together anymore?
And if love never lasts forever
Tell me what's forever for?

It's Valentine's Day. I am a sucker for all things romance. I love happily ever after. I'm still in love with the only guy I've ever been in love with. I like today. This morning, I told Spotify to sing me all the 90's Country love songs it could find. I smiled scrolling through husbands honoring wives and wives gushing over husbands on Facebook. My sweetie sent me sweet songs all day. It was lovely.
But more than that...
I talked to my sister today and we got on the subject of telling each other the Gospel all the time. We talked about how it's hard to pretend to love anybody at all if the Gospel of the finished work of our Christ isn't the main topic of regular conversation. We talked about love and religion and stress and fear and missing the mark and how important the actual Gospel is to our everyday relationships and communities.
But more than that...
I heard an old song today that I've surely sang a hundred times before, even though it wasn't the romance I was looking for, the words tumbled over and over in my heart all day. Michael Murphey belts out lines about people changing and hurting people and giving up on love; all of which is true. But then he asks, "What's the glory in living? Doesn't anybody ever stay together anymore? And if love never lasts forever, tell me, what's forever for?" Michael's singing about good old fashioned romance gone bad, good men giving up on good women and all that pain and drama.

But more than that...
But that's not what I saw when the lyrics got stuck in my head today. I starting thinking about actual forever and how loving each other for-actual-ever is the entire point of our lives in Christ. I sang those lines in my head all day, but instead of asking why couples didn't stay together, I asked why Believers so casually cut each other out of each others' lives. "Glory in living" didn't give me pictures of roses or candlelight dinners or even restored marriages. It made me think of "living in Christ" and how very, awful much we are supposed to be loving each other. More than loving each other for a season or a decade or even a lifetime, we are going to have the chance, as followers of Christ, to love each other for eternity; FOREVER.
Scripture talks so much about the brethren and their great love for one another, putting each other first, outdoing each other with honor, bearing one another's burdens, weeping with the hurt, praying with the sick, dancing with the rejoicing, loving each other deeply, with deeds and not words. It talks so much of this wonderful love between Believers that it says THAT LOVE will show the world who Jesus is.



To a world that doesn't know our Christ, our love lacks power. It lacks faithfulness. It lacks deeds. It lacks honesty. If we can't put ourselves second long enough to love each other for a lifetime, how will we ever love each other for an eternity? "And if love never lasts forever, then what's forever for?"
And honestly? We have to do better. We love our ways more than we love each other. We love our religions more than we love our brothers. We love our theology more than we love our communities. We love our bylaws more than we love our neighbors. We love our rightness more than we love our ekklesia.

"A new command I give you..." ~Jesus, our Christ. 

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