The Second Gaze - Love
So, there’s the cliche that says that couples after years together eventually start to look like each other...there’s also one that says that people start to look like their pets (my beard looks much like Scout’s pattern, but that’s a different topic)...Anyway...yesterday was Valentine’s Day and I was giving my wife her card later in the day along with the fancy dinner I made for her and the rest of the family. Funny thing was that in the morning, I opened her card for me and found that she had bought me the same card I bought her. The night before in playing a game of Taboo with friends (socially distanced and masked), after the first round we were told that we could not be on the same team because we worked too well together and picked up on too much stuff from each other. We took that as a compliment. So, there’s something to be said about what happens when we are in relationship with others (romantic, friendship, covenantal, etc) that is rooted in love that connects us and helps us to really be in a beautiful flow with one another.
When I think of the Body of Christ, that’s what I believe we are called to work towards - to a place where we work in harmony with one another, often without even having to think about it. When Paul writes about the different parts of the body in 1 Corinthians and uses the analogy of the human body to the community of believers, I always reflect on how the arm and the eye (or the many other parts he lifts us) function together in harmony without us really even having to think about it.
So, I am grateful for the love of my life with whom I share this crazy journey and how we have been knit together over the decades to where we got kicked off a Taboo team and we bought the same cards for each other. But I am also challenged about how we build those bonds between all people to live out what it means to be the Body of Christ in the world.