Only there

But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also; and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well. (Matthew 5:39)

None of this is possible except in the presence of a great love.

There is no way to rationalize Jesus’ turn-the-other-cheek teaching and make it make sense. It’s utterly beyond anything we can produce, and maybe that is part of the point. It’s beyond us; it’s certainly beyond me.

There are few quicker than I when it comes to taking offense when criticized or slighted. It’s an old wound, a childhood scar sensitive to the slightest touch. My heart harbors old hurts; anger and defensiveness ever ready, a well-honed reflex well trained by long ago moments of feeling small and “less than.”

Most of this is well hidden, of course, like so many of the inner dramas we lock behind heavy doors in our hidden hearts, trying our best to deny what we know all-too-well.

However well hidden, old hurts and suspicions control many of our moods and immediate reactions to, well, pretty much everything. Unearthing and understanding old wounds and unfilled hungers affords a bit of freedom to choose our responses to people and events we encounter day-to-day, including those most troubling.

But only the experience of a great and impossible love allows us to release our hurts and let down our guard knowing our worth, our dignity, our beauty has nothing to do with the words and actions of others.

Only there, immersed in an all-encompassing love sensibly embracing everything about us—every thought and memory however they have wounded us, only there do we find freedom from what has long defined and bound our hearts. Only there are we released to live beyond our defensiveness, beyond the tit-for-tat way of the world.

Jesus’ impossible words invite us beyond what we are and into the Love he is, the Love who invites us to descend into our hearts and pray out whatever darkness we find. He waits there, smiling.

David L. Miller