love is hard.

This has been ruminating in my mind, a quote from one of my favorite authors, Fredrick Backman in Beartown.

“Hate can be a deeply stimulating emotion.
The world becomes much easier to understand
and much less terrifying
if you divide everything and everyone into friends and enemies,
we and they,
good and evil.
The easiest way to unite a group isn’t through love,
because love is hard.
It makes demands.
Hate is simple.”

I’d gladly recommend anything he’s written. He’s a brilliant analyzer of the society that surrounds us and the realities that make us. But this quote from Beartown is so well said, as I watch the world right now–in particular my American world. It is so close, and yet so far away from me.

And it is so divided.

Love IS hard. It demands so much of us.

I have just been letting this roll around in my mind for a few days, wondering where I’m contributing.
Am I adding to the love or the division?
Am I creating a we|they or an us?
Am I dividing or unifying?

In 1 Corinthians 13, we see all the demands of love: love is patient, love is kind, love does not envy or boast, love is not arrogant, love is not rude…love bears all things, love believes all things, love hopes all things, love endures all things.

{Love is HARD.}

I’m trying to love anyway.