Love Can’t Be Microwaved

My daughter ordered water with lemon at a restaurant.

She took a seed from her lemon and had a wild idea: she wanted to plant it and grow a lemon tree.

Because when life gives you lemons, apparently you start a citrus farm.

As often happens with our kids, we couldn’t talk her out of it. We got her a flower pot, filled it with dirt, and let her plant the seed.

We just knew she was wasting her time. But every day, she faithfully watered her seed.

One day, something green sprouted up that looked like a weed.

We were like, “Oh no… now she’s going to think the lemon seed is actually growing.” We didn’t want to get her hopes up.

She got excited when she saw the “weed,” and we tried to tell her it wasn’t a lemon tree.

She was unfazed. She kept watering that weed, putting it in the sun, and protecting it during storms.

The weed kept growing.

Eventually, we took a picture of it to identify what the plant actually was. The plant she had been watering, sunning, and defending from us was…

A lemon tree.

That lemon tree is now over 2 feet tall, and my daughter walks 10 feet taller.

She didn’t give up on that lemon tree.

Even when it looked like nothing was happening.
Even when it seemed like she was wasting her time.
Even when her parents told her not to get her hopes up.

She revealed to me what love is.

1 Corinthians 13:4 (NIV) “Love is patient…”

Steward Suffering

Makro = long
Thumos = temper or suffering

To be patient is to suffer long.

Love isn’t described here as butterflies and floating on clouds. Love is not a cute, filtered Instagram post.

It’s not flowers and fancy restaurants.

Love has wrinkles, morning breath, and chews too loud.

Love is long-suffering.

I’ve been married 19 years. My wife has a PhD in long-suffering.

I’m a book nerd. I have a bad habit of leaving books on couches, bathrooms, cars, and countertops. Pretty much everywhere except on bookshelves.

19 years of this and she still hasn’t thrown one book at me.

If that’s not love, I don’t know what love is!

We Are Losing Our Patience

But real love isn’t insta anything.

Love can’t be microwaved.

It takes time.

Studies show what we already know, we’re losing patience because of technology.

A 2019 Psychology Today article found half of users abandon videos after waiting just 10 seconds.

A 2015 Microsoft study reported that the average attention span dropped from 12 seconds in 2000 to 8 seconds in 2013. (If you are still paying attention reading this, you are a practically a superhero!)

We are in an epidemic of endurance.

But I don’t need studies to know that. At my house, the slower the Wi-Fi, the quicker my family forgets we’re saved.

Patience? Well, it needs to hurry up.

Losing Patience = Losing Love

Jesus was never rushed. Never in a hurry. He had more to do than we do, yet always had time for people.

He never saw people as interruptions.

They were invitations.

For Him, people were not out of His way, they were the way. They were the mission.

We say time is money.

God says time is love.

The Gospel In A Coat

One Christmas, he came home and visited us with his rig. As a little kid, I was fascinated by that big truck. All I wanted to do was climb on the back of it and jump off of the wheels.

It was an unusually cold Christmas in the South, and I hadn’t brought a jacket. My uncle had this really nice, expensive jacket, and he offered it to me so I could go outside and play.

But he warned me, “The truck has grease on the back of it. Whatever you do, don’t get any grease on it from the fifth wheel. This coat is really expensive.”

Just ten minutes later, I walked back into the house, head down, tears streaming down my face, grease all over the jacket. I had fallen while playing on the truck and landed right on the fifth wheel.

I felt like such a failure. My parents started to lecture me when my uncle stopped them.

He looked me in the eyes, smiled, and said, “It’s okay. I really could use another jacket anyway.”

This moment still brings tears to my eyes.

I will never forget the radical grace and patience he showed me.

When we are patient we say, “I love you beyond the faults, beyond the errors, beyond the shortcomings, more than your imperfections, failures, and flaws.”

That is the gospel.

That is long suffering.

God’s love for us is just like that.

Don’t Give Up: Wait for It

This went on for years.

One day, after doing some work at the church, someone asked him once again to come to the service. This time, the guy finally said yes.

He showed up to church smelling like a brewery and obviously drunk. But at the end of the service, he walked down to the altar and gave his life to Christ.

He got up from the altar completely sober and saved.

We all celebrated with Heaven that day.

That same night, he went home, laid in his bed and died in his sleep.

He slipped out of the grips of hell and into the embrace of grace because one person wouldn’t give up on him. One person patiently endured all the “no’s” to get the one “yes.”

Now, that guy is in Heaven for all eternity, all because someone didn’t know how to throw in the towel.

Grace has a stubborn streak.

There are people all around us who need that same salvation, people on their way to hell, and people living in their own personal hell here on earth.

If we will show radical long suffering, God will do a work that will be more than you can think, hope, or imagine.

And when He does, I assure you, it will be worth the wait.