Sigh No More

 

Serve God, love me and mend
This is not the end
Lived unbruised, we are friends
And I'm sorry
I'm sorry

Sigh no more, no more
One foot in sea and one on shore
My heart was never pure
And you know me
You know me

But man is a giddy thing
Oh man is a giddy thing
Oh man is a giddy thing
Oh man is a giddy thing

Love it will not betray you
Dismay or enslave you, it will set you free
Be more like the man you were made to be
There is a design, an alignment, a cry
Of my heart to see,
The beauty of love as it was made to be

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Love. It amazes me how fickle (or I suppose I should say "giddy") we can be when it comes to love. Our hearts zealously yearn for love that is given freely and without agenda. We are undeniably and unabashedly seeking to know love that is unconditional, unrelenting, unbounded and unreserved; yet so often we are unaware of the fact that we are unwilling and/or unequipped to express such a love to others. Our hearts and our souls plead for this purity of love "as it was made to be," yet we consciously or otherwise persist in perpetuating but a mere shadow of love's truest form.

Surely enough we have all experienced at one point in our lives a distorted reality attempting to masquerade as love. Perhaps the even greater injustice, however, is that we learn to accept these realities for what they pretend to be. Musical artists Sleeping At Last in their song "A Skeleton of Something More" propose that, "Love travels like a rumor here, losing form with every ear, it's a skeleton of something more." Love as it was made to be, the love that was extended to us at the beginning of time by the God who is love and created us out of love has traveled to us in many instances by way of others. I've seen the love of my father who gave up an incredibly well-paying job in order to be around as I grew up, and I've seen the love of my mother who has been steadfast in her grace and compassion which has impacted not only my family but countless others. Because of this, the reality of love I have seen is rooted in grace and self-sacrifice. I have known many other individuals who grew up with a very different reality of love, love that is selfish and self-seeking, love that feels justified in its anger and wrath. The love we know has arrived to our ear like a whisper in a long game of "telephone" as we used to play when we were children. It started pure and relentless and it has been twisted and bent as it was passed along and for some of us, it looks nothing like it should. For others of us, it is beautiful and strikingly similar to the original phrasing, yet it remains but a small portion of an abundantly greater reality. It is but a skeleton of what truly is.

May we seek to know Love at its truest form. May we learn to love often, deeply and without an agenda. May we do our best to pass along a love that is not dismaying or enslaving, but a love that will set others free as we ourselves have been set free and continue to be set free. May the reality of love that we offer others mutually inspire both us and the recipients to be more like the men and women that we were created to be.