The Shape of His Love

Susan Meissner, She Reads Author

Have you ever let fear influence your perspective? My husband still teases me about a time that I did.

When our family lived in Minnesota we experienced what we called "bat season." It was a time of the year when bats regularly got into our home and needed help finding their way out. The usual mode of encouragement was a bucket and a tennis racket. A calm bat could be gently coaxed into a bucket with the racket, and then released outdoors. I wasn't overly afraid of them but I didn't want them near me and their flapping wings were a bit more than I cared to bear.

One night during bat season, I awoke to the sound of those wings. I looked up into the darkness and there on the ceiling was the chevron shape; its wings spread like the Caped Crusader. I had a sleeping husband next to me and no tennis racket.

I jostled Bob awake and rasped out the frightening news.

"Bob! There's a bat above us!"

He jolted upright and I hushed him quickly. "Where?" he whispered.

"Right there!" I pointed to the ceiling. "See?! What are we going to do?"

He looked beside the bed for a shoe, a magazine, anything. "I don't know," he said. "I think I am going to have to turn on the light."

"No! He'll start flying around!" I squeaked.

"I need a racket."

I was practically hyperventilating as Bob reached over to his bedside table and turned on the lamp. We braced ourselves for chaos. Light replaced darkness, revealing not a bat but our adjustable ceiling lights, shaped like a V because I had put them that way nine years earlier.

I had let fear convince me something was true when it wasn't. Not only did I rush to judgment, but I used my fear to convince someone else that what I believed was true.

Too often we pass judgment on people and situations we know little about. History has shown us that when we judge in ignorance we can make terrible mistakes. When we allow our view of someone or something to be swayed by suspicions or what the crowd says, we can make a tragic error of assuming something is true when it isn't. Fear tutors us to think that way. It warps our vision.
Jesus said He has only two expectations of us: Love God, and love others--including those whose ways we don't understand, who behave differently than we do, and who "flap their wings" when we'd rather they didn't. When we love God completely, we find the grace, mercy and wisdom to love the rest of the world. Plus, we are told in 1 John 4:18 that there is no fear in love.
When we make love our highest and best pursuit, fear and judgment dissolve as quickly as the shadows in my bedroom when I turn on the light. I am learning to let His light show me the shape of His love.
Dear Lord, You are the essence of love itself. We know that the more we love, the more we bear Your image to a world that so desperately needs to see it. Help us love more and judge less. In Jesus' Name, Amen.