Transformation Requires Vulnerability
Be courageous. Show the way.
“Genuine transformation requires vulnerability. It is not the fact of being loved unconditionally that is life-changing. It is the risky experience of allowing myself to be loved unconditionally.” — David Banner, Surrender to Love
Love is the essence of God. Anywhere love is present, God is near. Thus, even the smallest child wields the power to usher God into any moment, simply by choosing to love — whether that love is expressed toward a parent, or a friend, or a firefly floating through the garden. The manifestations of love are infinite in their variety, and the power to transform the world is nascent in every one of them. We all carry, in our capacity to love, the remedy for every shattered soul in the world, and every broken circumstance. But love, by its nature, cannot be forced on anyone, or from anyone. It requires vulnerability, whether in the giving or receiving of it, for it to be real, and effectual.
To choose to love anyone, or to receive love from anyone, is to expose yourself to the agony of almost certain heartbreak. The more defended the person or entrenched the brokenness of a situation, the more love is required to bridge the gulf between you, and the more heartbreak you will endure as a result. For even the greatest love of all, the love of Christ for the world, can be rejected, and often is.
If you mean to be a lover, then, you must resolve yourself to heartbreak, and not to treat it as something unnatural that shouldn’t be happening to you. All the best lovers in the world are heartbroken people, and they are all the richer for it. Even God is heartbroken, which should tell you something about what a heart is really for.
Even if a thousand souls reject your love, you can take heart in knowing that, inevitably, the thousand-and-first will receive it, and be transformed. In turn, their thousand-and-first will receive their love, and likewise be made new. And so on and on it will go, like leaven hidden in the dough, working its way through heart after heart, until at long last, the world will rise up, surprised to discover it has been healed.
