Is Love Blind?
Do you ever feel, like a plastic bag?
Drifting through the wind,
Wanting to start again?
Katy Perry. Who knew that woman could sing so much truth in one sentence? In other words, have you ever felt like you were just living a purposeless life? Or that you were just another name, another number, or another one of the thousands of Kroger “plastic bags” carried out of the store? A bag drifting aimlessly about the wind as it swept you away in its mundane monotony. Sometimes we think, I’m just another human being, like all the other 7 billion people on the planet, so I really can’t be THAT special.
When we see a plastic bag floating around, we can see that it lacks functionality. When this bag is busy hanging around up in the sky, it’s not serving its purpose. A plastic bag’s only purpose is to hold things, either groceries or trash. When it’s not being used for anything else, it’s typically stuffed in a cabinet somewhere for later use. I don’t think anyone wants to be a plastic bag drifting and wandering around aimlessly through life. If that’s true, then what is it that we are made for?
Nat King Cole, L-O-V-E baybee. We are made for love. Fashioned from the depths to know and love the Creator of our hearts because He is the only One who can satisfy them.
Surprisingly, a lot of us don’t believe God loves us. I’m sure you’ve heard it a thousand times, but when we get down to it, do we really believe He cares? Do we really believe He notices us? Or even acknowledges us? We might find ourselves saying, the only time God actually looks at me is when I do something wrong and he needs to discipline me. Sometimes we fall into this trap of thinking, God doesn’t really care THAT much. He only lifts His gaze to look down on earth occasionally to make sure we’re not tearing the place down. If we believe this, we may start to ask, why would He care about me?
Our own brokenness echoes this lie. If you’re a human being (which you are since you’re reading this) you’ve likely felt disappointed or neglected by other imperfect human beings at some point or another in your life. Maybe it was someone saying they would call, and they didn’t. Maybe it was someone who made plans and canceled because something came up. Maybe it was something so little, so insignificant, but deeply personal such as a friend or acquaintance forgetting your name. Maybe it was someone never texting you back, or a feeling of being overlooked or overshadowed by another person. We know the reality of what it feels like to be disappointed, rejected, discouraged, or neglected because we live in a world of imperfect beings.
It’s no wonder we struggle contemplating the love and tender care of God the Father.
When the examples of love around reveal to us that we are just a number, we tend to think of ourselves not only as insignificant to others but insignificant in the eyes of God. Saint Maximillian Kolbe once said, “the greatest poison of our times is indifference.” Oh, how true it is! Any lack of love that has escaped the human tongue has wounded our hearts in some way. This lack of love has not only hurt us, but it has shaped our own perception of love itself, so much so that we might not even recognize it in its most basic form.
Love in the shape of the Cross.
When Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel spoke about his time in the concentration camps, he stated, “The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it’s indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it’s indifference.” Are you seeing a theme here? Indifference. Here we can see the broken heart of man, the indifferent heart of man, and the effects born of his failure to act or to respond. He is us; we are him.
If we are imperfect humans called to the vocation to love, we must understand what prevents us from loving. Wiesel was right. Hatred for another is not the opposite of love because both hatred and love demand attention from us. To hate another thing or another person, I have to at least pay attention to them. The very act of one’s attention is what drives a person to hate because, to be against a cause, you have to know exactly who or what you’re against.
However, indifference allows lukewarmness to leave us lifeless and unresponsive. We can fail to fully see the needs of those around us, and to be honest, if we fall for this trap, we might not even be looking. We might fail to lift our gaze and meet eyes with another. This could be anyone. The man on the side of the road asking for food, or those around us at the dinner table. It might be too uncomfortable. It might be too real. It might be too much, requiring an act of vulnerability for me to lift my gaze.
In my life, the people who revealed God’s love for me were those same people who cared enough to want what was best for me. Family members, youth ministers, coaches, teachers, etc. all showed me what it meant to will the good of another. They sacrificed much through their time and dedication to help drive those souls entrusted to them forward. These were the types of people who could see a potential for greatness and encouraged those around them to run the race to achieve their dreams. (keyword: they could “see”)
To love someone, you must first see them, right? You have to notice them. I know they say love is blind, but what people mean by that saying is not that you can’t see the person you love, but that everything around you fades because you only see them. To be fully loved, we must be fully seen. Without being fully seen, we cannot be fully loved to the depth our heart’s desire.
As someone who has a strong aversion to public speaking, I’ve always wondered how married couples manage to profess their vows out loud in front of an entire congregation of people. Although the thought of it makes me nervous, I love watching the exchange of looks between wedding couples during their ceremony. The chemistry between the two is evident as they pick up on each other’s subtleties and facial expressions in ways that the people around them can’t seem to understand. They’ve grown so attentive to one another that they can express themselves or how they’re feeling with just one look. They lock eyes during the profession as if the gaze of their beloved is more important than anything or anyone else in the room.
This is the beautiful image of our God who is so madly and deeply in love with you that He sent only His Son to lock eyes with you, His Church, His bride! He is eternally attentive and intimately intertwined in every part of our lives and being. God cannot be indifferent to our sufferings or our sorrows or even to us as His creation. We forget that He is always present, never abandoning us. He is with us, here and now- even as you read this! Throughout human history, we seem to have a bad memory when it comes to His love, but it’s not His fault that we have such a false view of His goodness. We may be tempted to believe the lie that He is passive, He has better things to do, or that He has more important people to tend to, yet we only believe this because of the broken world in which we live.
So what can we do?
We can start by asking God for the grace to grow in courage to be vulnerable. Lord, help us to lift our gaze from whatever it is that prevents us from loving so that we can meet Your gaze in the eyes of our neighbor. God’s infinite love demands a response from us. Let us always carry in our hearts His love, so that we might share the gift of His Son to all those we encounter.
Amen.
