Observe a pre-school class for a day and you will no doubt witness several incidents in which one child will not share a particular toy with another child. The first child clings to the toy, proclaims “MINE!”, and goes ballistic if the toy is taken away by the teacher. In the child’s mind, he or she has an unofficial right to that toy and must cling to it to ensure that right. We call this sort of behavior “selfish.”
Grown-ups tend to do the same thing; not with toys but with relationships. Grown-ups discover a person that they like and in their minds they have this unofficial right to that person, causing them cling to him or her to ensure that right. When it comes to children and toys we call this “selfishness” but when it comes to adults and people we call it “love.” As a person who has both awkwardly clung and awkwardly been clung to I feel the need to call attention to this double standard and shine light on the truth.
“Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails.”
- 1 Corinthians 13:4-8a
When we cling to each other and call it love we are seeking our own. This evidences that our goal is not to serve the other person but to gain from them. That is not the attitude of Christ who came to serve us and free us from condemnation. So why should we, as Christians, treat our relationships with others any different? 1 Kings 3:16-27 tells the account of King Solomon’s wise ruling regarding two mothers. Both had babies the same age. During the night one of the babies suffocated so his mother kidnapped the other child and claimed it as her own. In other words, she clung to something she had no right to. When the case was brought before the King he ruled that the child shall be cut in half and shared between the mothers. Guess which woman was willing to let the child go with the other? The real mother who truly loved the child. The fake mother who clung to the child for her own fulfillment was willing to let it be killed while the true mother, out of love, was willing to sacrifice her right to the child to save its life.
This is how we should treat those we truly love. Instead of clinging to them in fear of loss, we must show our true love by allowing them the freedom to choose us back; the freedom to belong to Christ alone and through Him be a part of our lives as He allows. Clinging to someone we claim to love overwhelms them, manipulates them, and snuffs out any chance of them loving us in return. Putting this kind of pressure and responsibility on another person is an incredibly unloving act. Yet the world is fooled into believing that this is what true love looks like.
When we look to others for satisfaction and fulfillment we automatically fail them. No person in and of themselves can take on that duty. Only Jesus Christ satisfies. Thankfully, He creates relationships through which He satisfies us. To reap the fullness of His blessing from these relationships we must entrust them to Him and never cling to them as something to which we have a right. Relationships are gifts from Him to us! That is the beauty of love! We do not create it but we accept it from Christ and know that in His glory He has the right to give and take away.
Though we are imperfect and do fail, may we never settle for the world’s method of clingy relationships in the name of “love”. Rather, may we trust our Savior and surrender the control of our relationships to Him. After all, those kids who proclaim “MINE!” are terribly obnoxious anyway.
Love is not clingy.
“Hold everything in your hands lightly, otherwise it hurts when God pries your fingers open.”
- Corrie Ten Boom
“Love deeply, but hold loosely.”
- Maxwell
Picture credit: www.romancetracker.com
Sanctified and Surrendered by Caitlin Marie Stacy is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
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