Intensity of Love

If you're anything like me, you often find yourself getting worn down by your own habits and patterns. One of my patterns has to do with the way I love others. At one point, I'm wholeheartedly engaged in my community, meeting with friends, trying to stay culturally aware, and leaving very little space in my brain for thinking. At another point, I'm a energy-less clam who makes no time for others.

One explanation might be that I'm a borderline introvert-extrovert (according to the Facebook Meyers Briggs application). Or it could just be that my affections run rampant, with seemingly no real object to set them upon.

This is why reading Spurgeon this morning was encouraging. He helps clarify this question that I wrestle with: what does it mean to be in the world but not of it? Hold loosely to worldly affections, and lament my lack of love for the One who is truly lovely and worthy of all love. The full entry is here, but I'll share the little blurb that got my blood pumping:

"It is written, and nothing can blot out the sentence, "The upright love Thee." The intensity of the love of the upright, however, is not so much to be judged by what it appears as by what the upright long for. It is our daily lament that we cannot love enough. Would that our hearts were capable of holding more, and reaching further. Like Samuel Rutherford, we sigh and cry, "Oh, for as much love as would go round about the earth, and over heaven—yea, the heaven of heavens, and ten thousand worlds—that I might let all out upon fair, fair, only fair Christ." Alas! our longest reach is but a span of love, and our affection is but as a drop of a bucket compared with His deserts. Measure our love by our intentions, and it is high indeed; 'tis thus, we trust, our Lord doth judge of it. Oh, that we could give all the love in all hearts in one great mass, a gathering together of all loves to Him who is altogether lovely!"