I Love, Even If

I love, even if not loved back.

I love, even if not loved back the way I have loved.

I love, even if not loved back the way I expect or want to be loved.

I love: at all times, in all places—all people, even if….

It begins with the unequivocal commitment to carry within an attitude of love and goodwill—not selectively, or in favoritism, or to receive accolades for loving “difficult” people, or for the purpose of obtaining affirmation in return. 

It is simply and purely an attitude and motivation of platonic Godly love: authentic, not sentimental; balanced by a gentle and soft objectivity that requires that all people be considered and respected within an attitude of love: Godly love, of Christ, generated within by the Holy Spirit, whom we listen to and cooperate with.

Sometimes loving someone is easy. We all know this; we don’t have to think about it: for reasons of peculiar chemistry and sheer simpatico we simply hit it off with another and grow deeper and deeper in fondness. 

Other times, more frequently I believe, deep love for another grows gradually, from liking-well-enough, to knowing, to loving.

Other times, we may initially hit it off with a person but, upon learning more about them, we aren’t so sure that we still like them! This is where the practice and internalizing of even if…..begins: even if I do not really like this person, I will harbor within me a love for this person according to Christ’s first loving me, and continuing to do so, in spite of my certain unloveliness.

And when we find ourselves with some folks and situations where we come close to the edges of hate, we love even then through the entrusting of ourselves to God for His protection from ourselves and from our deep-seated ability to own and nurse an attitude of hate that quickly morphs into a motivation of hate, and worse. 

God can—for me, He must—be trusted when I can’t trust myself to love and be loving. 

In Christ, His love—not our drummed-up attempt at loving grudgingly in our own power—His love covers a multitude of sins (1 Peter 4:8), primarily our own by preventing them from being directed at others. 

So the beauty of the Christian life—the saving grace—is that we can love at all times from a pure motivation in Christ, even if. 

Copyright Barb Harwood

“Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love. By this the love of God was manifested in us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has seen God at any time; if we love one another, God abides in us, and His love is perfected in us. By this we know that we abide in Him and He in us, because He has given us of His Spirit.” 1 John 4:7-13