Second Hand Love

How are your New Year's Resolutions going? Only five days into 2015 and some of them may already be in the tank. If so...take heart. I know your frustration.  

Over the years I've grown weary of "New Year's Resolutions." While resolutions provide powerful motivation for some, for whatever reason rather than motivate, they frustrate me. So a few years ago, I gave them up. I resolved to no longer make New Year's Resolutions. I certainly don't criticize people who make them, I just don't make them anymore. Instead... I dream.

Dreaming, I envision what life can look like a year or more from now and I try to step daily closer to that dream. For me, it is a more creative process. At times I'm good at it, sometimes I'm not. Like in writing a song or making something with my hands. I know it may take time to get there, but I love the process of working little by little to make a dream a reality. Sometimes the end product looks different from how I first envisioned it, but that is part of the fun; part of the creative process.

Important to my creative process is realizing all the possible resources available to make a dream come true. I become aware of needed things to bring the dream to fruition. If the dream is a piece of music, I know there are certain resources I can use; particular instruments and elements of music theory. If it is a home project, I look at websites and I note the tools for the job. I may have some, or might borrow a tool, rent one or purchase one. Each tool is critical to make the dream a reality.

Dreaming, I also realize the value of people and relationships. 2015 finds me working toward a new dream called The Point. This morning I was thinking about all the people resources necessary to make this dream a reality. There are a lot of people needed; all bringing their unique gifts and talents together. Gathering all those things together isn't easy. I began thinking about the "glue" that will hold us all in place...allowing us all to move toward a common goal. And I realized the glue is...love.

I am blessed to know many people. Even if I doubt it at times, I'm confident many of those people love me and I love them. But something hit me this morning...here's what it was...none of the love we share is "original" to us. We didn't create that love, we merely pass it along; we're conduits of love.

Like light from the sun...we enjoy when it shines upon us. We live in the light of day. We've even learned to harness sunlight and store it's energy in batteries charged through solar panels, but we don't do anything to "originate" the sun's light. It always precedes us.

I think love works the same way. Love precedes us. It existed long before us and we simply tap into it and extend it to others. So...when I experience people who love me and they experience my love in return, we're really enjoying "second hand love." Not second-hand in the sense it is "gently used" or "leftover" but in the sense that we all filter and extend the most powerful force in the universe that didn't start with us. Like walking in the warmth of the sun or running off solar charged batteries...we benefit from a preexisting force... called Love.

The greatest thing about "second hand love" is that when we experience it we're experiencing Original Love (the Bible references this concept in 1 John 4:19). Genuinely offered, another person's love is an outcropping, a "secondary" extension of the true Original. Realizing this not only allows us to enjoy expressions of love more confidently (knowing they come from an even greater source than the person), but it also draws us back to the One who has been loving from before time. With that kind of resource available, how can we not dream of a brighter tomorrow? I guess that's The Point, isn't it?