Di Amare

This morning, while I was enjoying a heathy dose of Kix cereal with sliced banana {(side note: it's delicious)} I did something that in the past has always given me interesting results:
I held my bible with the spine on the table and the ends of the pages up, chose a place I knew would be somewhere in the New Testament, and let it fall open. It opened to John 17:1-26. Jesus was in the garden, praying to God, knowing that He would soon be taken to be brutally murdered.

“Father, the hour has come. Glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you. ² For you granted him authority over all people that he might give eternal life to all those you have given him. ³ Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. ⁴ I have brought you glory on earth by finishing the work you gave me to do. ⁵ And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began. ⁶ I have revealed you to those whom you gave me out of the world. They were yours; you gave them to me and they have obeyed your word.²⁰ My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, ²¹that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. ²² I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one— ²³ I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.²⁴ Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world.²⁵ Righteous Father, though the world does not know you, I know you, and they know that you have sent me.²⁶ I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them.”


I have been around the bible my whole life. I have read the books of the bible countless times; some more than others. I know the stories by heart. I knew that Jesus prayed to God in the garden, I knew it was hard for him, etc, etc. I never actually gave this passage any thought. 
Think about it, Jesus knew that within moments, one of his followers would betray him, and he would be lead away to a shameful, embarrassing, slow tortuous death; so that humans for hundreds of generations could live their inherently disgusting, hypocritical, sin-filled lives and still have a chance at living in heaven for all of eternity. He knew all of this, and yet he prayed to God his father that we would have the same glory that God bestowed on him. 
What amazing love. 


Here's another amazing thought: In Ephesians 5:25 God told men to love and cherish their wives the same sacrificial way that Jesus does the church. Now, the church isn't a building. The church is the people. Men, you are to love your wives the same way that Jesus loves us: deeply and unconditionally. 


God has done some amazing things...from the creation of the world to the human psyche, my favorite thing that he created in this universe is LOVE. True, deep, love. Not the love found in high school, the love that Jesus had for us, and the way that God modeled the relationship between a man and a woman in a biblical marriage to be the same deep emotion, the love that is felt when first meeting your newborn child, the love that keeps families together, the love between true friends; love binds us all together. 


Perfectly. 

"Love is a temporary madness. It erupts like an earthquake and then subsides. And when it subsides you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have become so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion. That is just being "in love" which any of us can convince ourselves we are. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident. Your mother and I had it, we had roots that grew towards each other underground, and when all the pretty blossom had fallen from our branches we found that we were one tree and not two."

{{-Louis De Bernieres}}