Star Wars Weapons, God, & Love.

I had an extreme stroke of genius about what to write about tonight. It had something to do with Barak Obama and the possibility of his election to become U.S. President. But then I realized I just blogged about 50,000 words about this very topic last week and thought I was going to start losing my readership should I pull such a stunt. So, I’m switching gears a bit.

I had a conversation a few months back at a coffee shop with an old friend of mine. Now, this friend is someone who has an incredible passion, energy, and overall aura about her. Every conversation I have with her – which unfortunately have been few and far between -- reaches depths of epic proportions and her permeating words infiltrate my life at what always feels like the perfect time. Needless to say, our conversations are fresh and life- giving in comparison with my often bland and surface level “Oh. My. Gosh! Where did you get your shoes?!” like-conversations that seem to be peppered throughout my daily grind. (By the way, I’ve been hearing of a lot people buying their shoes at PayLess recently. What is this place? And I think I would rather PayMore.)

Anyhow, as usual, our conversation on this particular day reached depths that have had atomic bomb-like spiritual effects . Sipping our caffeinated drink that a lovely barista handcrafted for us, we suddenly stumbled upon the subject of love and forgiveness and how those two salient themes have – or have not -- been playing out in our lives. Being just a couple days away from her wedding, we were discussing her vows and what she was going to say in front of God and an assembly of believers and the gravity and binding nature of these statements.

As our discussion moved on, she stopped me at one point and said “Trac. We really just don’t know how to love. Love has been so perverted and so distorted that we don’t know what we are doing with it! It’s like love is a light sabor and we’re little kids just flailing it around without a clue! We have to ask God how do it right because that is what HE is. Our way of doing it is all wrong.”

As the conversation moved on and we polluted the environment with extreme bouts of boisterous laughter and consequently received a good amount of dirty looks from fellow caffeine patrons, I got sidetracked and kind of forgot about her statement above. But after we said our goodbyes and I was driving back to the office being sweetly serenaded by Wyclef Jean, I remembered her quip on love and had to laugh. A light sabor? C’mon!

However, in recent weeks in my dealings with co-workers, family members, friends, etc. her bizarre illustration and assertion has haunted me. And consequently, I have realized how right on she is. I have no idea what I’m doing when it comes to loving other people. That is, truly loving them in the most honest sense of the word. Now, our culture and the media that exploits it, portrays love as something we as humans produce, wield, and control. We see love portrayed as strictly romantic, purely selfish or, in the words of one of the most ridiculous movies of all time “true love is the soul’s recognition of its counterpart in another.” However, clearly, this is not the comprehensive explanation of what Jesus mandates us to do to God and our neighbor. In fact, I think love is a lot more than what we think it is.

In hindsight, I have noticed when people attempt to love on their own ability or out of their own motives or ambitions, what they generate on to the other person is a perverted, deformed, and tainted love. Or, in more everyday terms, we produce a knock-off brand of love. And we all know that among such things as diamonds, cash, and jeans – with love, knock-offs just won’t do. We have to have the real thing.

In many ways, this is why so many people are walking around hurt, wounded, and forever scarred. They’ve been loved the wrong way. They, as my friend said, were struck with a swing of a misdirected light sabor and are now hurt and deformed. But since God is. And God is love. He can heal all wounds and He can show us how to love correctly in the first place and help us not make the same mistakes again. We would all be remiss if we rejected the advice of Albert Einstein when trying to figure out an equation for Relativity, why then do we reject God’s advice on something that He invented and embodied?

All this to say, I think my friend was right with the whole running-around-clueless-swinging-around- a-light-sabor-illustration. I suppose I just never fully grasped how entirely incompetent I really am on my own when it comes to the loving others or perhaps even myself. But the fact of the matter is, we are wired to love God, others, and ourselves and knowing and understanding the Creator is the only thing that will guide us in doing so in a manner that won’t – metaphorically speaking – inadvertently slice off the limbs of the recipients of our love.



I realize my metaphors are getting more bizarre by the minute. And you’re probably asking yourself at this moment, did she really just use a Star Wars weapon reference in her blog? I’m sorry. I really am. It wasn’t my illustration to begin with, I just opted to steal it.