A couple of years ago, I was talking with a friend who had a falling out with his pastor. They followed Jesus side by side for years; they shared memories of ministry experience; they watched each other’s families be established and begin to grow. But not everything about the relationship was healthy. In the end, sin brought destruction to multiple spheres of the pastor’s life. He left the ministry and cut ties with my friend.
These former friends needed a season of relational distance. They had each been hurt in different ways. A fog of sadness settled over their memories. Walls were built. Wounds needed mending. I recognized the need for my friend to maintain appropriate boundaries, and yet I expressed hope that their story was unfinished. Perhaps one day, like He did for the apostle Paul and John Mark (Acts 15:37; Col. 4:10), God would bring about repentance, forgiveness, and restoration so that certain aspects of their friendship would be restored.
Love Hopes All Things
One of the ways that love “hopes all things” is by persevering in relationship when all seems lost, by stretching out your arms toward someone else, even when their arms are crossed or their back is turned.
Persevering love doesn’t seek to control or bully or manipulate. Such love casts aside any attempt to remake someone into another person’s preferred image. The goal is not to exert pressure or force transformation.
No, persevering love is patient, holding out hope that the relationship will continue because love is present. Love is still there, at least in the heart of the one who perseveres in love, even if affection has vanished in the heart of the one who has turned away.
As long as love remains, even a one-sided love, the possibility for restoration remains.
Love Prevents the Total Break
Not long ago, I posted some reflections from the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard on how love is necessary for us to see—really see—another person’s goodness. Another point Kierkegaard makes in his spiritual writings: the one who truly loves never falls away from love.
“It takes two to love,” we say, except this isn’t true. Even if a prodigal child rejects a parent’s love, even if a spouse or friend or boss or coworker becomes estranged, and even if the wounds pile up and the hurts lead someone to close their heart, love can remain. One of the two can choose to abide.
By persevering, the one who loves can keep the break in a relationship from becoming total. The one who abides in love can keep the break from becoming permanent.
“By abiding, the one who loves transcends the power of the past. He transforms the break into a possible new relationship, a future possibility. The lover who abides belongs to the future, to the eternal. From the angle of the future, the break is not really a break, but rather a possibility. But the powers of the eternal are needed for this. The lover must abide in love, otherwise the heartache of the past still has the power to keep alive the break.”
Hyphen of Hurt or Hope
Kierkegaard uses the analogy of a compound word. When you see a first word and then a hyphen, but then don’t see the second word, you realize something is missing. The word is incomplete. The word is waiting to be finished.
The one who perseveres in love recognizes the break that has occurred. The hyphen of hurt is there, and it has brought about a painful breach of trust or a sense of separation.
But to the one who abides in love, the hyphen of hurt is also a hyphen of hope. It indicates that the relationship has not been forever severed. The word awaits completion. The relationship awaits restoration.
The perseverance of love doesn’t require us to close our eyes to the past. We don’t deny the hurt or the pain or ignore the relational breakdown. We merely hold onto hope that an irrevocable break has not taken place.
Faith in Future Conversation
Any good conversation includes moments of silence—when talking ceases—for seconds or minutes. Your son or daughter may cut all ties and say they’ll never speak to you again, but as long as you remain in love, the solemn silence can be transformed into quiet hope—that even if years pass without a word, the conversation is not over. The one who loves remains willing to pick up the discussion again, no matter how long it takes.
The father of the prodigal son remained in love. Why else would he have waited, scanning the horizon of his village, if not because his love persevered? The years of his son’s silence and squandering were not the end of the story, and because the father remained in love, he awaited with eager anticipation the moment the conversation would continue, the blessed day he would shower his son with kisses and clothe him in his finest robe.
“Put the past out of the way,” Kierkegaard writes. “Drown it in the forgiveness of the eternal by abiding in love. Then the end is the beginning and there is no break!”
As long as we abide in love, the book remains open, the sentence a fragment, the last chapter unfinished. Love abides.
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