Earlier this week I had a strange dream… well, most nights I have pretty bizarro dreams. But there was something different about this one that caught my attention.
I hadn’t remembered it at all until later into the next day when I heard a random phrase that brought this particular scene rushing back to the forefront of my mind. Although I can’t remember much of what happened before or after this portion of my dream, I feel like I’ve been carrying the essence of it with me ever since.
In the dream a woman was freaking out at me. She was absolutely livid. I didn’t know this woman in the dream and she wasn’t anyone I recognized immediately from my waking life. She was mad at me because I had been “giving away too much love”.
She was motioning to all of these scenes of me sharing love with strangers and although I can’t remember any of those moments, I remember so clearly being taken aback by how upset this lady was and that I wanted and needed so desperately to share with her what I knew about love.
I kept trying to hear her out and listen to her concerns and I remember feeling like I was chomping at the bit and waiting so impatiently to finally get to tell her what’s what.
Eventually she settled down long enough for me to be able to reach out and put my hands on her shoulders. I began telling her that love isn’t about subtraction!!
“Love multiplies!!” I cried out excitedly as she stared at me totally dumbfounded. “Love isn’t something that can just be taken away from me and given away to someone else. That’s never the end of it! Once it has been shared with someone else, they get to give it away to someone else and it just – keeps – Going!! Love is all about multiplication!!”
I need you to know that this is not a concept I’ve ever knowingly considered and I will gladly count this one as a God dream. Because I too was totally floored by this idea!
A friend of mine once told me a theory about dream interpretation where every character in your dream is supposed to actually represent different parts of the dreamer; every person in my dreams is actually me. I’m not so sure that it applies every time, but as I was contemplating this dream it resonated.
I’d love to say that I’m always the person excitedly sharing love around and remembering how there is an unlimited supply of Love in God. However, there are plenty of times when I’m actually the Panicking Lady. The person who is getting nervous because too much love has already been poured out and given away. The one who is attempting to keep track of all the love I’ve received because surely too much has been given and my limit must be just around the corner.
It can be easy and tempting, even, to try measuring Love with our very small human scales. The confounding truth of the matter is, though, that the Love of God is overwhelmingly good and kind, and 100% never-ending.
Which makes no sense. And yet somehow, nothing truly makes sense apart from it.
I could refer you back to 1 Corinthians 13 to remind you of what the attributes of Love are (and I do of course encourage you to check that out too!) but I actually recently found a quote from Richard Rohr that stopped me in my tracks and I’d love to leave it with all of you as we consider what the miraculous multiplication of Love can practically look like in our lives.
“Justice without love is legalism; faith without love is ideology;
hope without love is self-centeredness; forgiveness without love is self-abasement;
fortitude without love is recklessness; generosity without love is extravagance;
care without love is mere duty; fidelity without love is servitude.
Every virtue is an expression of love.
No virtue is really a virtue unless it is permeated, or informed, by love.”
Richard Rohr