Loving A World That Won’t Always Love You Back

Nothing makes sense.

God doesn’t care.

Why me?

This isn’t fair.

Broken. Lost. No purpose.

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Over the past year, I’ve found myself reverting to this mindset — the mindset that the world is a place of pain, that things will never work out for the best, that my soul is permanently broken, that I will never find fulfillment because the world simply does not want me to, no matter what I do.  I have found myself in pieces when I have loved the world and it has not loved me back, and I have found myself praying for the help of a God that I wasn’t sure cared about me or existed at all. I’ve looked at my own life and wondered how God could possibly love me, and I’ve looked at the world and wondered how God could still love a place that seems so broken.

I’ve found myself loving people, places, possessions, accomplishments, success, and so on with the expectation that I was going to get all of that love back — and I have been brought to my knees every time that the world has given me pain instead. I have desperately wanted to shut the world out, to deem it as a horrible place, to give up, all because I have felt as though it didn’t give me the love that I deserved.

But this isn’t how God loves. God doesn’t love mankind because he expects us to love Him back, and he doesn’t stop loving us when we stop loving Him. He loves for the mere chance that maybe someday we’ll run to Him and realize that it’s never been the world’s love that was promised to fulfill us — it was and is God’s love.

The world has never promised to return the love that we give it.

But God did, and God promises to love each and every single one of us, everyday – even when we choose not to love Him back. It’s not a love that we’ve earned. It’s not a love that we receive because of the love that we have given. It’s a love that we will never truly deserve, and yet He gives it freely.

Lately, I’ve found myself in a space where I don’t know how to keep loving in a world that won’t always love me back. I don’t want to keep giving love in exchange for pain. I know that each of us is called to love freely and fearlessly, but I don’t know how. I don’t know how to love without the fear of being devastated, let down, or drained of everything that I am.

I remember a Church service recently where our pastor was telling the story of a family that had just lost a child, and the family had a prayer service filled with worship. At the lowest point in their lives, at a time where nothing made sense, at a time where they had every right to question God, they had their arms up praising Him. They understood that the love of God could heal what this world could not.

“You don’t have to understand the space you’re living in, you just have to know what to fill that space with.”

I don’t know how to heal a broken heart. I don’t know how to fix a world that can seem so cold. I don’t know how to explain the things that just don’t make sense. But I do know this:

It starts with Him. If we have any chance of continuing to love in a world that won’t always love us back, God is that chance.

Maybe you’ve loved someone or something so hard that you feel empty. Maybe you’ve devoted your life to a goal that just didn’t work out. Maybe you’ve felt slighted by God. Maybe tragedy in the world has made you stop believing in God’s love. Maybe you just want to be cold to the world because it has been cold to you. I know, because I’ve been there. I’ve searched for fulfillment in the arms of the world instead of the arms of God. I’ve put hope into what this world could offer me. But God has already offered us the greatest gift of all:

Love. A love that is greater than any heartbreak, any disappointment, any tragedy. A love that can’t be matched by anything in this world.

We just have to be willing to search for it.

I’m still looking for it, every second of every day. I’m looking for it in a world that so often seems cruel and unforgiving. But so long as you have eyes that can see, ears that can hear, and a mouth that can speak – choose love. Look for love, even when it’s hard to find. Listen with love, even when the opinions of others are hard to grasp. Speak with love, even when the world challenges you to do otherwise.

Choose love. Choose love when it’s hard, when it’s easy, when you feel like you can change the world and when you feel like your actions won’t make a difference on this planet – not because it makes you look better or because you know it’s the right thing to do. Choose love because this world needs it, and you do, too.

– J.E.H.