What kind of love

They don’t come any cuter, you know. They really don’t. I finally got my son to bed tonight. A half hour past his bed time he was still running laps around the kitchen, throwing himself down and pretending to be a donkey. “Hee haw, Hee haw” as he crawls straight legged, rubbing his head along the floor.

My son’s unabashed enthusiasm is nothing short of amazing to me. This kid loves life, and he celebrates it every chance he gets. Whether he is grabbing his guitar and mimicking his dad, or naming every animal on his Baby Doolittle video, it is amazing to me to watch this tiny little person run through my house. Just thinking about it literally brings tears to my eyes, I love the kid so much I can hardly stand it.

I think that something wakes up inside you when you fall in love. In this case, the day my son was born something woke up inside me that had somehow still been asleep. I’ve never been one for emotion, I’ll roll my eyes at the sappy heartstring stuff on TV. No matter how dramatic or horrible, I never cried at movies. Ever. It just was never my thing.

The day my son was born that changed. I can’t explain it. All of a sudden, I’m crying at Extreme Makeover Home Edition. I’m crying at the sappy, happy endings. And I’m crying at the mere thought of my boy getting excited, running over to me when I come home from work and throwing his two year old arms around my neck.

It’s not that I’ve never fallen in love before, but I think maybe it was more gradual the first time. I mean, I didn’t meet my wife and the next day cancel all my plans and spend 24 hours a day with her. We moved a lot faster than most, and even so it was a few months before we were engaged. But with my son he suddenly arrived, and boom – this daddy part of me came to life. This part that adores this amazing little creature. The part that delights in his every joy, and hurts at his every tear. This part that can’t think about his happy face, playing a game of “Ringy-Rosie” and cackling as he falls to the ground without a tear or two.

All of this begs a question, though. Why can’t I love God that way? I mean, I always hear stories of the people who can’t talk about Jesus without crying. I remember a professor in college who had a reputation for never being able to get through a lecture on Jesus without tears. Some days I really wish I was one of those people. Not that I want to always have my heart on my sleeve necessarily. But what would it be like to always be so moved, so emotionally invested in what Jesus did for me and the love he has for me to be hardly able to stand it?

Lifehouse sang a song with the lyrics, “How can I stand here with you, and not be moved by you?” Maybe its familiarity – you talk about Jesus dying on the cross every single week, take communion every week – that it loses some of its impact.

Regardless, there is a relationship there, isn’t there? I mean in this case God is the Father and I am the kid, the one who’s joy he delights in. I am the two year old who doesn’t even comprehend what it means to love. We are still trying to teach our son to say, “I Love You.” You’d think he’d have it down by now, as much Barney as that kid watches (shudder.) “Milk” he has down. “Drums” is a natural. But love is a lot harder than that, isn’t it. Maybe he takes for granted the house and family that he has always had, much like I may take for granted the God who has always loved me and who I have never been without.

I want to be one of those guys. You know, the ones who can’t get through the story of what God has done for them without some display of emotion. The ones who can’t talk about their relationship with Jesus, how much they flat out love him without a tear or two.

Love is one of those complicated things. We mean so much by it, but then sometimes it means so little, you know what I mean? I know that God has taught me to understand what love is more fully through my wife, and then through my son. Those relationships have taught me things that I never could have read about and understood otherwise.

So the question remains… now that I understand love more fully, how do I express it to God in that same fullness?

I was thinking about all of this a couple weeks ago, and you know what verse I thought of? 1 John 4:20, “anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, can not love God, whom he has not seen.”

Dang it, not what I was looking for.

I was hoping for some kind of mystical awakening, the kind where you are suddenly enlightened and empowered and you reach a new understanding that changes the way you feel forever.

Could it be that the key to loving God that way, is to love the people in my life that way? And not just the people I like, but the people who really irritate me? I’m not a social butterfly, I don’t like big crowds. When I walk in to a shopping mall or crowded store, I don’t automatically see a store full of potential friends. No, I see a store full of obstacles. People who stand between me and my goal of getting in, getting out, and not being delayed or having to talk to anyone. People in public seem to exist only to slow me down and inconvenience me.

Maybe the feeling toward my “obstacles” is getting in the way of the feeling toward my savior. And maybe, just maybe if I can learn to love the people around me the way I love my family, the way that inspires me, the way I delight in my son’s accomplishment and joy and excitement – then maybe I can love Jesus that same way.