a furious love

​Images of Princess Diana hugging a leper and fearlessly walking through a minefield dance across the TV screen.  Diana’s fearlessness and love for the people have earned her the title of the peoples’ Princess. The Princess demonstrates a love that caught the people of a nation and across the world and made them feel important.

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​The song writer experiences a wonderful love, and he writes about it, describing it as a ‘furious love.’

Paul Ellis, author and pastor from New Zealand, likened the crucifixion of Christ as a ‘picture of spent anger and furious love.’
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The thought of love being furious is a new thought to  me.  To my mind, the meaning of ‘furious’ is connected with anger. I wonder, is there an ‘angry love’? Can love be angry? I cannot reconcile ‘angry love’ with my experience and understanding of love.

THE MEANING OF LOVE
I take the thought in another direction, ‘fast and furious’ is a term often used to describe abandonment, wildness,  breakneck speed. These meanings applied to ‘furious love,'  convey the concept of a wild, abandoned, reckless love, a love that is fearless and can we say, ‘mad love,' as portrayed in the images of Princess Diana walking through the mine field.
We could describe ‘furious love’ as a fierce love,  a love that doesn’t give up or let go but clings on regardless, a reckless love that despite the cost will continue to love no matter how unlovely the person or object is
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GOD'S LOVE
All this conjecture about love directs us back to the love of God.  His love for us is, by our standards, reckless, wild,  abandoned, fierce,  a love that doesn’t give up on the person he loves.  We can throw as many tantrums as we like, tell him we hate him, don’t believe him, that he doesn’t exist yet he doesn’t withdraw his love. The Bible is clear, ‘Be strong! Be courageous! Do not be afraid of them! For the Lord, your God will be with you. He will neither fail you nor forsake you.’  Deut. 31: 6 LB. 

THE DARE
Dare we withhold ourselves in any measure from such a fierce, furious, reckless love that God has for us? Can we remain unaffected, cold even, to such a love? Yes, we can, but more fool us if we do. In this furious, abandoned, reckless love of God is our very beginning, our end, God’s  very DNA within us. Have we deserved it? No! Have we earned it? No This love God has for us has conferred on us all the goodness and perfection of his son Jesus.  All we have to do is – surrender!

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