By Trey Ferguson
God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them. – 1 John 4:16b
I think about this scripture often. God. Is. Love.
I struggle with this, for it leads me to question if I understand what love is.
I recognize that so much of the meaning we have erected around love hinges on the reality and pursuit of a feeling. But who is to say when feelings are enough to sustain the rugged reality of relationships in a harsh world?
I have been Black in America my entire life. The son of an immigrant and a woman whose parents had to navigate a difficult courtship under a strictly and legally segregated nation, the feeling I am most intimate with is rage. Countless hours of meditation, prayer, and therapy have helped me access a wider range of emotions. But I still walk with my rage. It is a part of my most authentic self.
Does God hold space for my rage? Can I abide in love with my fiery companion?
I try to chase love through the winding road of scripture. I find it curiously absent in the retelling of most marriages along the road. I find it loudly present in the testimony of a Divine Creator’s relationship with all of creation. With a growing people. With a changing world.
Is there space for my rage in creation? Can my fiery companion find belonging in a growing people? In a changing world?
And then I read that love is patient. Kind. Not envious or boastful or rude. Not demanding, nor self-centered. That it is not irritable, and keeps no record of being wronged.
I begin losing hope that a love like that could ever embrace my rage.
I discover that love does not rejoice in injustice, but celebrates in revealed and celebrated truth.
Wait… has love opened a door for my fiery companion?
I learn that love does not quit. That love does not lose belief. That love never lets hope slip too far away. That love survives in the roughest of conditions.
Has love set a place for the fullness of my humanity?
I suspect that love is not a feeling in juxtaposition to my rage. Love is not a missing ingredient in my composition.
Love is a commitment to wholeness.
God, the creator of the heavens and the earth, is the commitment to wholeness.
This commitment to wholeness nurses the battered parts of my soul, even as it directs my attention to the weariness of those around me.
In living in this commitment to wholeness, I live in God. And God lives in me.
I find my rest in a God who holds space for my rage while inviting joy to the table, because such a commitment to seeing me whole is the very essence of the Divine. I find new life in The One who is restoring creation to wholeness, even as we grow in wholeness ourselves. I find peace in knowing that my redemption is the natural effect of God’s love – this divine commitment to wholeness. Wholeness for me…
And when my rage walks with me, I remember that God’s commitment is patient and kind. That it does not rejoice in injustice. I am reminded that this commitment will not quit on me. This commitment has not lost belief in me. This commitment survives in the toughest of circumstances. This commitment doesn’t even try to separate me from my rage. Instead, this commitment reunites me with my joy. The commitment is not concerned with molding me into someone else’s template. It is committed to seeing me whole.
I am glad that God is love. I choose to live in this commitment to wholeness. And now it lives in me.
Trey Ferguson (he/him/his) is a minister, speaker, and writer. He is the host of the podcast The New Living Treyslation, as well as a co-host of the podcast Three Black Men: Theology, Culture, and the World Around Us. His newsletter The Sun Do Move features his reflections on faith in the modern world. When he is not reading or writing, Trey can be found annoying his wife and children with his childish humor and torturing himself by watching the Miami Hurricanes play football and the Brooklyn Nets play basketball