Those completely devoted to veritably loving others desperately plea and fervently grapple with the innermost limits of their hearts enduring strength to not rest until their neighbors, friends and adversaries alike are all joyfully apprehended by love, encouraged by kindness and blanketed with compassion.  The truly devoted know and deeply understand that there is no greater passion, no greater calling, no worthier a quest, than to genuinely and wholeheartedly love those who move, laugh, cry, sing and live all around them every moment of every day.

In loving one another we surely choose to welcome each others joyful experiences as well as our painful, uncomfortable ones; willingly accepting the weight of certain tragedy into our lives, bearing each others burdens and sorrows together.  Whether it be through tears or laughter is of no consequence for there is no more fulfilling a commitment to be made, and nothing gained or accumulated in a single lifetime, or in many, could ever surpass the lasting satisfaction that comes from a life totally centered upon and wholly surrendered to loving others regardless of any harsh, prefabricated dividing lines or boundaries which have subtly infiltrated our lives through a pervasive, influential and seemingly overwhelming culture bent on tilting us toward selfishness, cut-throat competition, and over consumption.

Sincerely loving people is the greatest and foremost calling we have on our lives.  If we fail to love, than we have failed at everything.  If we gain the entire world–obtain riches beyond imagination, acquire power above all other rulers, give everything we have to the poor, win the favor of multitudes, rid the world of poverty, provide clean drinking water to the thirsty, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, educate the uneducated, heal the sick, become famous–yet we have not nor have we ever shown true love, than we have gained nothing and sacrificed everything.  To love, regardless of anything, is the greatest opportunity we will ever know.

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.  If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.  If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.  –I Corinthians 13:1-3

Cultivating a lifestyle of love in a world consumed by noise is not just a good way of living, it is the only way to ever truly live.  Without love, life is but a fragment of what it was designed to be.  All other pursuits are fleeting, here today and gone tomorrow, worthless in the face of eternity and the lasting remembrance of those whom you had the opportunity to impact with love but chose instead to pursue self serving ambition and dream.

How much longer will we conceal our love?  For how much longer will we encapsulate our hearts, hiding our love away, saving it only for those whom we know will love us in return?  We look the other way.  We quiet our voices to a whisper.  We shun the needs of others, and we cast away those who so desperately long for our attention and care.  If we gain the entire world, yet we forfeit our souls, hold too tightly to our love, than we have lost everything.  In this life, to gain or to lose, if it be without love, is merely an illusion, a trickery of the senses meant to shield us from freedom and disguise the needs of others as illegitimate.  If they be outside of love, put down your petty pursuits and start anew.  Begin a journey of freely loving others with all that you are and all that you have been given, for in the end nothing else will matter.

Yeah, if it doesn’t break your heart it isn’t love
Now if it doesn’t break your heart it’s not enough
It’s when you’re breaking down with your insides coming out
It’s when you find out what your heart is made up of

– Switchfoot, Hello Hurricane, Yet

It is difficult to fully comprehend just how dedicated we are to someone until something radical occurs in relationship to them.  The radical relationship breakdown usually involves some level of inner restlessness simultaneously accompanied by movement toward a point of firm decisiveness.   The decision, many times, is between following someone or something wholeheartedly–truly committing to the journey–or, slowly backing away, severing ties in silence.  It’s in these moments of breakdown that we come to an unequivocal understanding of just how meaningful or not that one persons life or thing is to our own.  We tend to see most clearly in the breakdown, when all else fades into the background and the truly important within a defined moment stands up and makes its presence known.  In the midst of challenging transition, we either cut through the clutter, or the clutter cuts through us.

When something so significant transpires that your heart unmistakably breaks in response, then you know, despite every other surrounding distraction or desire, that your life will never again be the same.  It is during the initial moving of our hearts that sincere, lasting transition takes place, starting within the inner most portion of our minds, moving graciously outward, striking through layers of self-composed identity, transforming our entire lives into something new.  It is within this state of transformation where freedom, overwhelming peace, and genuine joy are discovered.   It is during these moments of breakdown that we begin to see our lives through a more earnest lens, honestly begging ourselves for the answers to the most demanding questions we’ve been ignoring for so long.  Within the breakdown, we are capable of better differentiating between what is genuinely valuable and that which is simply not.

We seek a beautiful breakdown.  We long for a transition in thinking away from thoughts consumed with the feverish satisfaction of our own wants and desires by way of accumulation and self-service into a life defined by a genuine, passionate pursuit of something greater than what our current, self-imposed routine has to offer.  We seek a heartfelt breakdown; a shifting and bending of our hearts toward Love.  We long to live lives founded upon and consumed by love, to run freely forward completely at peace, canvased by grace and mercy.   We seek a breakdown of commonality, no longer to be defined as lukewarm, content to blend in and slip away into the comfortable, quiet reverie that is complacent mediocrity.

To seek a beautiful, captivating breakdown is to chase after something bigger than anything we can ever be on our own.  It requires self sacrifice, an attitude of surrender, and a world-view founded upon the idea that if I have I will give and if I have not I will still give.  The relevancy of the message is that within the breakdown, within the stripping away of everything that hinders us from seeing clearly–undivided by selfish pursuit–there results the common factor of love which binds us all together.

Despite the breakdown, the personal struggle, the hardship, the internal wrestling with what genuine generosity looks like, despite it all, nothing can eliminate or outweigh the love we show and have for one another.  When all else is stripped away, and there is nothing left to lean on, nothing else to run to, love will remain.  Love conquers the deepest of all breakdowns.  It reaches in, heals, and sets us free.  When every other distraction is dispersed, love still remains.  In the end, how we respond to the core issue of love is what will matter the most.  As my friend Aaron likes to ask, “Are you using your stuff to love more people, or are you using people to get more stuff?”  A strong dedication to love is a commitment capable of sustaining us through any breakdown.  In the end, after the storms of life have passed, after everything of lesser importance has left the conversation, when we are satisfied in a state of beautiful transition, nothing else will be significant outside of authentic, vibrant love.

I don’t know.  Why should I fill my brain with facts I can find in two minutes in any standard reference book?  -Einstein, in response to the question: how many feet are in a mile?  As taken from the book The Magic of Thinking Big

Maybe you are like me.  Maybe you spent 4 or 5 or even 6 years of your young adult life in a lecture hall, voraciously attempting to scribble down words onto a lined sheet of paper in hopes that later on that week you would be able to interpret what you actually wrote down.  Maybe you are like me, and you asked yourself, “Why am I doing this?”  

What we are taught in school is to push as much information, as many facts as we possibly can, into our overloaded, overworked brains.  We are then taught that those of us who are best able to keep those facts in our brain just long enough to spew them back onto a more formal piece of paper, called an exam, are the most successful of the group (class).  

What is wrong with this picture (or should I say reality)? 

For the majority of students, this way of learning and using our brains continues into the rest of our lives, leaving us with brains that function as mini-warehouse storage units rather than as well polished, active thinking machines.  Remember, (or learn for the first time) it is more important to use your mind to THINK rather than to STORE.  Most anyone with a higher education experience can store, but very few can actually think and process and create and imagine and…well, you are starting to get the picture.  

A fact storing person is only worth as much as the encyclopedia or Internet data base that he memorizes his facts from.  A thinking man or woman is a priceless asset.