Frostbite Thoughts: Temporal lives, infinite love

When love is lost, we grieve even to the point beyond enduring. Thoughts of unparalleled sorrow break our being. We contemplate the frailty of life and the anguish that death brings. Love is never long enough.

Love was never purposed to operate in mortality. Perhaps among the greatest of human despair is to source our deepest joy only to have it curtailed by the temporal. Our lives are vapor, as a reminder to live it wisely. And yet, even if we did love, the mismatch between our mortality and love’s immortality remains a focal dilemma. The chief end of any human endeavor —whether pride in self or pride in having loved —will always be death.

Or is it, really?

If death is the end of us, then how spiteful our existence must be! Whether we labour or be merry, all our actions, will eventually end in death.

Unless our lives aren’t ephemeral. Unless the love that leads us to despair is the same love telling us that there is more than the substance of our weary frame. Unless we are made to live eternally so we can love eternally.

Love is never long enough. That is why love did what it knew best to do. Love entered time. Love came unassuming, crying as an infant, helpless and dependent. Love poured blood and self-sacrificed. Love gave up its immortality and willingly perished. Love identified with the plague of humanity’s condition in toil and death. And since love was incorruptible, death could not pin him down. Love rose like someone who had awakened from deep slumber. That rising became our triumph.

We can love without the fear of tomorrow because the future has been rigged in our favor.

But that is if we and our loved ones believe this narrative to be true. Did love really do that? Did love prevail to redeem our immortality? Is our love worth it?

When seasons come and forces us to move forward, remember. We ache for a little while, but there is hope in the hurting. Love endures and waits on the other side.