When I was a young girl and as a young woman, I thought that romantic love was all that a person could possibly aspire to. The idea of finding that perfect soulmate was the ultimate dream of any young woman. It’s a message that young girls get from the time they start watching Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella. I was reminded of this message when my husband and I watched “The Notebook” together recently. Of course, after entering into a relationship with Christ, I came to realize that there is another kind of love, a more transcendant kind that goes beyond man and woman or even parent and child. A love that reaches out into the world in the both the past, the present, and the future–divine love.

This contrast of romantic love and divine love is what I was thinking about today when I read an article in Christianity Today called “Who is your Neighbor?” by Drew Dyck. The story reported a group Washington churches who struggled after opening up a tent city for the homeless. There in a community where the average home costs one million dollars, Pastor Leslie Ann Knight has faced brutal criticism and even lawsuits. She described it as the price tag that comes with being compassionate. Divine love can be costly.

Recently, I have been thinking alot about the barriers that exist between most Christians and the poor. In a recent interview with Tony Campolo, Shane Claiborne mentioned a survey that he did during this time at Willow Creek church. He said that he asked people if they thought that Jesus knew poor people and, overwhelmingly, they answered to the affirmative, but when he asked if they personally knew any poor people only about 5% answered positively. It made me wonder whatever made us think that love didn’t involve sacrifice.

I called my mom the other day and asked her how her week went, and she told me that it hadn’t been great. She and my dad had met a man who was working for the painter they’d hired, and he needed a leg up. They had a trailer in a nearby town on an empty lot and they offered to let him stay there for a song. He lived there for about a year until recently leaving town and leaving them with a trashed trailer, a $250 water bill, and enough beer cans underneath the trailer to at least offset some of the cost. Even so, it cost them more than it did the man they helped, but I hope that doesn’t stop them the next time they have a chance. Even so, much like the song by the group ironically called “Nazareth” once sang, “Love Hurts.” (Okay, so the Everly Brothers did it first and Incubus did it more recently, but I remember the 70’s version)

Divine love does hurt and yet we always seem to expect it not to. I think we need to remind ourselves that divine love like Jesus intended was meant to include sacrifice. It was intended to keep giving long after it was embarrassing, uncomfortable, and difficult. So, what’s keeping us from offering that kind of divine love? Fear? Money? Both? I don’t know for sure. Maybe we have just had a disconnect between loving and acting on love. Maybe we thought that loving was a feeling and not an action. Maybe we believe that way because we’ve been trained by movies, TV, and society’s unwritten rules that love is supposed to feel good and feel safe. Thank God Jesus didn’t subscribe to that philosophy or He might never have gone to the cross for us.