A Miracle Drug

Many have by now heard the latest song by U2 called “Miracle Drug.”  Over the past 15 years I have suffered with Akalosing Spondalytis (AS).  It is an arthritis that devastates the spine of young men in their teens and stays with them for life.  But we now live in a world that our grandparents would never have drempt of.  We have a cure for things that devastated their generation, like Polio.  My grandfather at the age of 22 was forever changed by Polio.  He was paralyzed from the waist down and never walked again.  It happened overnight.  Isn’t that amazing how in one night your whole life can change?  We share a similar burden, my grandfather and I.  Recently, however, I was approved to be put on Embrol a life changing drug for those with AS.  Soon I expect to be doing things I can barely remember doing without intense pain.  Certainly this is a “Miracle Drug,” that by the providence of God has begun to change lives…transform lives.

But what U2 refers to is not a narcotic, but “love.”  The “Miracle Drug” they sing of is that power that flows from one person to another that is able to change…able to transform.  While this is very true I ask the question why?  Why do we love and for that matter how does love change or transform?

As Christians we understand that out of love God created the world.  Man, however, questioned this love and charted a new course of lonliness and despair.  God, knowing this loved again by coming down to meet man in a covenant of love, a life-love bond.  God simply promised to love man forever.  God knew that the Source of love would be the only solution to the rebellion of man…so He loved the unloveable.  Here is the most amazing thing about men and women, they simply don’t know how to be loved, they refuse perfect love!!!  Haven’t you ever come across this?  I have.  I have loved someone and they became confused and even distant.  But this is the gospel, Jesus the Son of God came into the world, laid aside all His glory and loved the unlovable, even those who could not receive His love.  So they killed Him.  Yet, perfectly, out of this hatred this love exploded upon the world and transformed it.  This is a “Miracle Drug.”  Not a humanitarian love where we have some “pie in the sky” 1960’s ideal, that if we just love one another we shall see world peace, but the love of God.  Only the love that resembles and flows out of the love of Christ will change the world.

For the love of Christ alone can change the world.  This love loves courageously, without need or expectation of love in return, but a type of love that moves selflessly to change and transform the other.  Christ understood Himself loved perfectly by His heavenly Father and was able to love perfectly.  Same for the Christian who is loved so perfectly.  So one who has been changed by the love of Christ by faith, go forth being perfectly loved and love those who don’t know how to be loved.  For this may change them.