The Capacity of Love
One of the most amazing miracles I’ve ever experienced in life was the birth of my daughter. There is so much anticipation and excitement leading up to that moment where she enters the world for the first time. I remember where we were at, who was with us, and what was going on in full detail. Before this moment, I thought kids change a lot in life growing up, but still to this day I think more change happens in the first hour of a child’s life than in the first 3 years. I won’t gross you out with more birth details, I promise. What I want to talk to you about today is love and what takes place the moment somebody or something special enters your life.
The word capacity means the maximum amount that something can contain.
Some people would use the term full or completely filled up. Regardless, the word capacity gives an inclination that space or void we are referring to cannot fit anything else into it.
Referring back to my daughters birth, literally the second before she was born, I had this preconceived notion that I had a certain capacity in life to love — for the sake of illustration lets say 1 gallon. All my life I walked around with this 1 gallon container of love. Sometimes this container was full, sometimes completely empty, and sometimes somewhere in between. The moment my daughter was born it was as though I had been given a 2 gallon jug instantaneously, a miracle took place.
About a year ago my wife and I had a conversation about where we are at, how our “tribe” was doing, and what we thought was on the horizon for us. I made a statement to her that basically said I refused to believe that the amount of people I know and friends I have at this moment in my life were all that I would and ever would have. Now don’t get me wrong, I know a lot of great and amazing people, but in terms of contentment with the community I have built around me, I still have a long way to go. It is moments like this where I have to realize that my capacity for love must be continuing to grow all the time. Some people love sports, food, or the latest craze of Pokemon Go; that’s not what I’m referring to right now. I’m referring to having more and more meaningful human connections.
So the question I want to answer today is this: can a person expand their personal capacity for love or is this something happens spontaneously? I want to make the case that you can on purpose increase your capacity for love. It is not something that you have to wait to serendipitously happen to you.
I do not consider myself an emotional person, I have often been told that I need to smile more, and sometimes people who don’t know me think I am mad at the world. The reality is I’m not mad, I am an introvert. I do walk around with good posture and am often recognized in public places as the person in charge just because I look like I know what I’m doing. Regardless of all those “negative” things I have going for me, I can often use the excuse of “I’m not an emotional person” as a crutch for not letting people into my life. There have been many moments in life where as a result of something I personally did, my capacity for love increased. I remember working as a counselor at summer camp, and these two little girls had a crush on me. They came from a very broken home and had been sponsored to go to camp that week to learn about God. At that moment my heart expanded. When I went to a third-world country the summer of my senior year of high school and went down to the slums to invite kids to summer camp, my heart expanded. Recently, a group of people I work with participated in a toy drive for needy kids at Christmas. There were kids that were 13, already had a kid, and had ankle bracelet’s on because they were on parole; at that moment my heart expanded. Right about now you are probably thinking about the Grinch Who Stole Christmas, that is not my intent.
How is this going to happen you may ask? For me, it has to start and end with my relationship with God.
If I am to love more people for the right reason with the right amount of energy and not grow weary in doing it, I must rely on God for strength. Whether it’s my wife, my daughter, any member of my family, my neighbor, or my co-worker, it has to start with God. That simple.
So I leave you with a simple challenge today: find ways in which your capacity of love can expand to a new amount. Volunteer at a homeless shelter. Go on a mission trip. Determine to compliment everybody on one thing that you come in contact with you today. Write an encouraging email, text, or tweet that you have been meaning to. See what happens, and reply back to me in the comments section.
