LOVE-VULNERABILITY
To love at all is to be
vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly
be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your
heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies
and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or
coffin or your selfishness. But in that casket—safe, dark, motionless,
airless—it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable,
impenetrable, irredeemable...The only place outside Heaven where you can be
perfectly safe from all the dangers...of love is Hell.
The Four Loves, 1963, p. 111-112.
C.S. Lewis indicated that if
he wanted something easy and pain-free, he would have chosen a bottle of wine
over Jesus. There is no question that
biblical love leaves us more vulnerable.
But this will not be the devastating vulnerability that comes with
psychologically needing people.
Christians need less and love more.
Edward T. Welch
When People are Big and God is Small, P&R Publishing,
1997, p. 211. Used by Permission.
The path of God’s love is
not without suffering. In fact, those
who love more will suffer more.
Edward T. Welch
When People are Big and God is Small, P&R Publishing,
1997, p. 179. Used by Permission.