Happy Valentine’s week, everyone.This is the month of love and lust.
Love is kinda big. So let’s zoom in and put a magnifying glass on it. What do we have here?
We have care-taking inside love. It kinda looks like farmland where you intentionally grow things that nourish you. We have faith to climb mountains. We have muliwai, rivers of hope. Oh, and look at this! A little pond of desire.
Ponds contain mold. There’s parasites in there.
Do you know some parasites are actually good for you? Doctors are deliberately infecting patients with certain parasites to cure autoimmune diseases. Anytime you have a bacteria that threatens your body, your immune system just attacks it! Attack! Attack!
The parasite tells your body, “Hey! Relax.” The parasite squishes in there and creates a barrier between your body and the bacteria, secreting stuff that heals your wounds and inflammation. The parasite helps your body set up healthy boundaries— instead of panic and go on the attack.
All of this happens in a beneficial way because there is an ecosystem which contains it.
Love is an ecosystem
Love is an ecosystem.
Inside love, we have nourishing self-care which is like farmland, faith which is like a mountain, rivers of hope— and a little pond of desire.
What’s dangerous is if any of these natural features inside the heart become too big— in relation to the other natural features. If your river of hope is too big, it floods. The flood ruins the farmland and you can’t do any self-care or nourish yourself. If your mountain of faith is too big, nothing can grow in its shadow. If your pond of desire is too big, you have parasites running around everywhere. Instead of just protecting you from the bad stuff, they protect you from the good stuff, as well.
Desire unchecked, becomes parasitic. It becomes lust.
The purpose of lust is to jealously guard what is precious.
Now, this is a good thing—in small quantities. Lust is part of love. But it’s just pinch fingers a part of it. It’s not the whole thing. But it’s still a part of love.
Love needs at least a little lust to be balanced, it needs that thin layer of protection.
The danger is when we decide— cuz it’s Valentine’s Day— to take lust out of its ecosystem of love and separate it from all the other elements of love and use it STRAIGHT UP like vodka with no pineapple juice or anything to counterbalance it.
Because lust without love is just pure jet fuel.
You’re asking for an explosion and that’s exactly what Samson gets when he meets Delilah, but first, let’s talk about chemistry.
