A greater pursuit in life than love...

Two of the most moving stories in the New Testament will give us a clue that there is a greater pursuit in life than love.

1. The story of the Samaritan woman by the well is one who lived a life of quiet desperation.
     •Jesus’ disarmingly gentle triumph in getting her to admit that her   pathetic state of rejection was the chief of her woes
     •Looming behind her nervousness and her welter of religious questions was her greatest heartache – her loneliness

2. The second story took place in the home of a Pharisee named Simon.
     •Simon – no courtesies offered a guest were given to Jesus – no embrace, no water to wash his feet, no towel to dry them, no offer of refreshment.

Listen to the words of Luke 7:36-43:

When one of the Pharisees invited Jesus to have dinner with him, he went to the Pharisee’s house and reclined at the table. 

A woman in that town who lived a sinful life learned that Jesus was eating at the Pharisee’s house, so she came there with an alabaster jar of perfume.

As she stood behind him at his feet weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears. Then she wiped them with her hair, kissed them and poured perfume on them.

When the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, “If this man were a prophet, he would know who is touching him and what kind of woman she is—that she is a sinner.”

Jesus answered him, “Simon, I have something to tell you.”

“Tell me, teacher,” he said.

  “Two people owed money to a certain moneylender. One owed him five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. Neither of them had the money to pay him back, so he forgave the debts of both. Now which of them will love him more?”

Simon replied, “I suppose the one who had the bigger debt forgiven.”

“You have judged correctly,” Jesus said.

     •Woman – dared to come uninvited, gave to Jesus the best of her possessions, fell prostrate at His feet – washing them with her tears and drying them with her hair.

 
There are similar clues in both stories to the answer of the heart’s struggle of loneliness and the longing for the beyond – let's take a look at C.S. Lewis' concept of the four loves in order to put the human existence factor on the table first, before dealing with the beyond.