Be Loved

By Tresca Grannum

One of the deepest longings of mankind is to be loved. We will do almost anything to be loved. Our whole being craves and thirsts for love, and not for any kind of love, but for pure “unconditional” love. Have you ever wondered why this is so? We will fight each other, manipulate each other, control each other and even destroy each other when we do not feel loved. For love, we will try desperately to please each other, sometimes at any cost. We will perform for each other and allow ourselves to be used and humiliated by each other, all for the sake of love—for just one crumb or drop of human love.

Have you experienced a very destructive, unhealthy relationship? Some relationships can wreak havoc on you emotionally and cause confusion, fear, timidity, hostility, or coercion. There are other unhealthy relationships where you feel distant, ignored, unvalued, and unfulfilled but you find yourself adapting to it, feeling it is better than nothing. Why? Because of one crumb of love? I have met many individuals who are battered and abused both emotionally and physically, and they always say to me, “But I love him.” I have talked to teenage girls who intentionally got pregnant. The reason they give: “I wanted someone to love me and need me.”

This is no mystery; we all need and want to be loved. I too have felt that same sense of despair and desperation and would do almost anything to fill my cup of tainted and unsatisfying human love, only to have to scrape the bottom of the barrel over and over again and come up short. How could we be so needy and sometimes stoop so low to be loved? And why do we continue to pursue human love with a vengeance only to find ourselves empty and unfulfilled?

Why, because our Father made us this way. Our Heavenly Father, created us for Himself and to give us as gifts to His Beloved Son. We were never created to live and exist from human love, but only from our Father’s love. We were created to be containers of our Father’s pure, heavenly, untainted, infinite, and unconditional love. We were created to experience a love that transcends us, that overflows from us, a love that consumes us.

And this love is only found in God. He knew that one day we would come to the end of ourselves and long for something different, and thirst for something to satisfy us when we have done and tried everything to appease ourselves. He knew that we would one day go searching and seeking for His love and once we apprehended it we would never leave home again, attempting to be satisfied otherwise.

One of my favorite passages in the Bible is about the woman at the well. It truly depicts the story of every human soul in search of love. We go from thing to thing, person to person and quickly tire throwing each other away when our needs are no longer being met. One day she met Jesus, who told her about a love, that when she drank it, she would never thirst or long for human love the same way again. In Christ, we can drink and be satisfied. In Christ, He fills the longings of our souls. In Christ, we experience a love so rich, so pure, that one drop satisfies us.

If you are hungry, or if you are thirsty for love…come inside where your Beloved resides, sit and drink of His love.