C.S. Lewis said, “To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly 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 with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket – safe, dark, motionless, airless – it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable…”
That place Lewis describes where our love becomes unbreakable, impenetrable, and irredeemable… that state of being is what we refer to as Hell.
Love is hard.
Loving one another is one of the most difficult things we can do.
However, if we DO NOT do it – look at what happens. We become “hard” to that powerful emotion that changes things; that transforms others and us.
Lewis describes a “coffin of selfishness” … isn’t that true? That withholding our love is selfish? Especially if we are doing it because we don’t want to be hurt again?
There is no promise in this life that we will go through it without pain.
Remember Jesus…. Those that he loved so deeply….. his closest friends….they turned their backs on him and several betrayed him. Yet, it didn’t stop him from loving them. He showed us what it is like to live through pain and betrayal.
He demonstrated what it means to let go of that pain, surrender the burdens, and open ourselves up to loving again.
What can you let go of today so that you can be ready to love again?