A Poverty of Love

Looking for love in the wrong places often leaves us feeling empty. Corey Widmer discusses how humans can find love and a sense of belonging through Jesus.

Questions for Discussion and Personal Reflection

  1. What is "home" to you?
  2. What are some of the "wrong places" you've searched for love?

The whole world is marked by homeless beggars looking for love. There's an interesting theme that runs throughout the Bible - it's almost like a theme of homelessness. You know, the Bible begins with two human beings who are perfectly loved, who are perfectly loved by God and who are able to love him back. But because they choose to take things into their own hands they're expelled - they're pushed out of love. This is what sin does, sin which is basically living for ourselves instead of God, instead of others. That's all basically sin is. It always pushes- pushes us out of love. If you think about it, if you lie to your spouse what does that immediately do? It pushes up a barrier - it pushes you out of love. It pushes you away - it creates an estrangement, an isolation. The problem is that we think that we can find that place of love in a lot of different places that can never actually deliver on it. We try to find it through other human beings, through the arms of beautiful people. We try to find it through money. We try to find it through success. We try to find it by building the perfect home. We try to have it by having the perfect children. There's all of these things that we attempt to use to get us back home again - to get us back to that place of love, but it never works. And it always ends up making us feel empty. And so the promise of the Christian story and the message about Jesus is that he's finally delivering for us - that he is finally bringing us back to the place of love, that Jesus Christ came into the world to show us the way home, that he came into the world to bring us back to Eden, if you will - to bring us back to the place where we are welcomed by grace where we are not judged, where we are embraced for who we are, loved by God and we are finally- finally homeless beggars who are given a seat at the table, who are brought in to the central living area. Jesus once said to his disciples I am going to prepare a home for you, a place for you. I think that is just a beautiful promise that Jesus makes - that he wants to bring us back home again, back to the place of love.