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Works of Love XV: Love Abides

[From Part II, Chapter VI: “Love Abides”]

“…Love abide[s]…” ~ 1 Corinthians 13:13 (ESV)

A relationship of love—whether it be romance, family, or friendship—requires two parties. Both sides must be invested in order for there to be a relationship. We have been commanded to love and, “so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all” (Romans 12:18 ESV). But what about when it doesn’t depend on me? What about when our neighbor chooses to end the friendship? If a relationship of love requires two people, and it is impossible to force another person back into the relationship, then how are we to live out our command to love? Do we walk away from them? Do we cling desperately to them? Do we chase them down, pleading with them to remain with us?

The common reaction might be to walk away—mourning the loss, but resigned to it. After all, what else can we do? Love has been broken. There’s nothing else we can do, right? Well, according to Kierkegaard, there is one thing that we can do, which love itself does: love abides. We have spoken of how love does not give up hope—and because it does not give up hope, it does not walk away—it abides. Kierkegaard writes,
“[T]he breaking-point between the two is reached. It was a misunderstanding; yet one of them broke the relationship. But the lover says, ‘I abide’—therefore there still is no break.… That the relationship has reached the breaking-point cannot be seen directly; it can be known only from the angle of the past. But the lover wills not to know the past, for he abides; and to abide is in the direction of the future. Consequently the lover expresses that the relationship which the other considers broken is a relationship which has not yet been completed. Although it lacks something, it nevertheless for that reason is not a break. Therefore the whole thing depends upon how the relationship is regarded, and the lover—he abides.” [1]
Pause. What Kierkegaard is saying is that, when two people go their separate ways, we can only say that their relationship is over because we are looking at it as a part of the past. We’re not thinking of what could happen in the future. But love hopes all things, and so the lover looks to the future and knows that there is still the possibility of reconciliation. He does not define the relationship by what has happened. He defines it by what can still happen. Unpause.
“And so it came to the breaking-point; there was an argument which separated the two. But one broke it off; he said: ‘It is all over between us.’ But the lover abides; he says, ‘All is not over between us; we are still midway in the sentence; it is only the sentence which is not complete.’ Is it not so? What a difference there is between a fragment and an unfinished sentence!”
For the lover, who hopes all things, a conflict is not the end of the relationship. Because the lover always loves, the door is never shut on reconciliation.

Interpersonal conflict is difficult to navigate, whether it is coming from you or not. In fact, I think it’s much harder to know what to do when you are told that a friendship is over than when you tell it to someone else. Do we let them go? Do we grovel? Do we try to keep them around at any cost?

Love does not require that we abandon our principles for the sake of a friendship—I do not need to be a person’s close friend in order to love them (and trying to force them to be my friend can be distinctly unloving).  But this one thing is constant: our love must abide. We must always leave the door open for reconciliation. If we intend to love those who have stopped loving us, we must always hope for their return and make it possible for them to do so.

Dear Father,
I hate to feel vulnerable. I cannot stand being emotionally exposed. And so, when a friendship is lost my instinct is to slam the door behind them, to protect myself by cutting off the relationship entirely. And then of course there is my pride, which does not like to lose and does not like to take back those who have hurt me. Help me to overcome these failures of mine. Remove my fear of vulnerability. Give me the courage that comes from divine love, which hopes all things. Overcome my pride, which draws my attention to myself and away from those I ought to love. Give me the patience and determination to abide in love, to be eager and ready to welcome back those who have broken with me. And give me the humility to recognize those relationships I have broken and to seek reconciliation myself.
In the name of Jesus Christ, our reconciliation, whose love abides eternally,
Amen.




[1] Søren Kierkegaard, Works of Love. Harper Perennial, 2009, p. 284.
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