Unconditional love and patience

We talk a lot about unconditional love as Christians.

Unconditional love.

A love that says, "no matter what you do", I will continue to love you.

"No matter what you say," that will never change my love for you.

That can be hard - especially with those closest to us - for it is only those closest to us who can hurt us the most.

Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 13:4, "Love is patient, love is kind.  It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.  It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.  Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.  It always protects, always trust, always hopes, always perseveres.  Love never fails."

Here is what I know:  Unconditional love does not mean I will agree with everything someone does or says.

Josh McDowell writes:

Tolerance says, "You must approve of what I do."  Love responds, "I must do something harder:  I will love you, even when  your behavior offends me."

Tolerance says, "You must agree with me."  Love responds, "I must do something harder:  I will tell you the truth, because I am convinced the "truth will set me free."

Tolerance says, "You must allow me to have my way."  Love responds, "I must do something harder:  I will plead with you to follow the right way, because I believe you are worth the risk."

Tolerance seeks to be inoffensive; love takes risks.  Tolerance glorifies division; love seeks unity.  Tolerance costs nothing; love cost everything.

Rick Warren writes:

"Our culture has accepted two huge lies.  The first is that if you disagree with someones lifestyle, you must fear or hate them.  The second is that to love someone means you agree with everything they believe or do.  Both are nonsense.  You don't have to compromise convictions to be compassionate."

Here is what I also know:  Unconditional love waits.  It is patient.

Sometimes as Paul writes, all that unconditional love can do in the midst of disagreement is wait - and pray. 

Philip Yancey writes in his book, "What's So Amazing About Grace," that there was a young girl who grew up on a cherry orchard just above Traverse City, Michigan.

Her parents, a bit old-fashioned, tend to overreact to her nose ring, the music she listens to, and the length of her skirts.  They ground her a view times, and she seethes inside.

"I hate you!" she screams at her father when he knocks on the door of her room after an argument, and that night she acts on a plan she has mentally rehearsed scores of times.  She runs away.

She has visited Detroit only once before, on a bus trip with her church youth group to watch the Tigers play.  Because newspapers in Traverse City report in lurid details the gangs, the drugs, and the violence in downtown Detroit, she concludes that is probably the last place her parents will look for her. 

California, maybe, or Florida, but not Detroit.

Her second day there she meets a man who drives the biggest car she's ever seen.  He offers her a ride, buys her lunch, arranges a place for her to stay.  He gives her some pills that make her feel better than she's ever felt before.  She was right all along, she decides:  her parents were keeping her from all the fun.

The good life continues for a month, two months, a year.  The man with the big car - she calls him "Boss" - teaches her a few things that men like.  Since she's underage, men pay a premium for her.

She lives in a penthouse, and orders room service whenever she wants.

Occasionally, she thinks about the folks back home, but their lives now seem so boring and provincial that she can hardly believe she grew up there.

She has a brief scare when she sees her picture printed on the back of a milk carton with the headline, "have you seen this child?"  But by now she has blond hair, and with all the makeup and body-piercing jewelry she wears, nobody would mistake her for a child.  Besides, most of her friends are runaways, and nobody squeals in Detroit.

After a year the first sallow signs of illness appear, and it mazes her how fast the boss turns means.

"These days, we can't mess around," he growls, and before she knows it she's out on the street without a penny to her name.  She still turns a couple of tricks a night, but they don't pay much, and all the money goes to support her habit.  When winter blows in she finds herself sleeping on metal grates outside the big department stores.

"Sleeping" is the wrong word - a teenage girl at night in downtown Detroit can never relax her guard.  Dark bands circle her eyes.  Her cough worsens.

One night as she lies awake listening for footsteps, all of a sudden everything about her life looks different.  She no longer feels like a woman of the world.

She feels like a little girl, lost in a cold and frightening city.  She begins to whimper.  Her pockets are empty and she's hungry.  She needs a fix.

She pulls her legs tight underneath her and shivers under the newspapers she's piled atop her coat.  Something jolts a synapse of memory and a single image fills her mind:  of May in Traverse City, when a million cherry trees bloom at once, with her golden retriever dashing through the rows and rows of blossomy trees in chase of a tennis ball.

"God, why did I leave," she says to herself, and pain stabs at her heart.  "My dog back home eats better than I do now."

She's sobbing and she knows in a flash that more than anything else in the world she wants to go home.

Three straight phone calls, three straight connections with the answering machine.  She hangs up without leaving a message the first two times, but the third times she says, "Dad, Mom, it's me.  I was wondering about maybe coming home.  I'm catching a bus up your way, and it will get there about midnight tomorrow.  If you're not there, well, I guess I'll just stay on the bus until it hits Canada."

It takes about seven hours for  bus to make all the stops between Detroit and Traverse City, and during that time she realizes the flaws in her plan.  What if her parents are out of town and miss the message?  Shouldn't she have waited another day or so until she could talk to them?

And even if they are home, they probably wrote her off as dead long ago.

She should have given them some times to overcome the shock.

Her thoughts bounce back and froth between those worries and the speech she is preparing for her father.  "Dad, I'm sorry.  I know I was wrong.  It's not your fault; it's all mine.  Dad, can you forgive me?"

She says the words over and over, her throat tightening even as she rehearses them.  She hasn't apologized to anyone in years.

The bus has been driving with light on since Bay City.  Tiny snowflakes hit the pavement rubbed worn by thousands of tires, and the asphalt steams.

She has forgotten how dark it gets at night out here.  A deer darts across the road and bus swerves.  Every so often, a billboard.  A sign posting the mileage to Traverse City.  "Oh God."

When the bus finally rolls into the station, its air brakes hissing in protest, the driver announces in a crackly voice over the microphone, "Fifteen minutes, folks.  That's all we have here."

Fifteen minutes to decide her life.  She checks herself in a compact mirror, smooths her hair, and licks the lipstick off her teeth.  She looks at the tobacco stains on her fingertips, and wonders if her parents will notice.  If they're there.

She walks into the terminal not knowing what to expect.  Not one of the thousand scenes that have played out in her mind prepare her for what she sees.

There, in the concrete-walls-and-plastic-chairs bus terminal in Traverse City, Michigan, stands a group of forty brothers and sisters and great-aunts and uncles and cousins and a grandmother and great-grandmother to boot.  They are all wearing goofy party hats and blowing noise-makers, and taped across the entire walls of the terminal is a computer-generated banner that reads "Welcome home!"

Out of the crowd of well-wishers breaks her dad.  She stares out through the tears quivering in her eyes like hot mercury and begins the memorized speech, "Dad, I'm sorry.  I know...."

He interrupts her.  "Hush, child.  We've got no time for that.  No time for apologies.  You'll be late for the party.  A banquet's waiting for you at home."

Sometimes, all you can do is wait.  And pray.  And hope.  And put your trust in God.  And keep on speaking the truth.

That's unconditional love.