“It's the weight of love in your arms,
It's the weight of love in your arms,
It's the weight of love so gentle in your arms.”
- From Weight Of Love by Snow Patrol
These seemingly very simple lines have been running around my head for days. I love the image. The robustness, the weight of love, something that suggests heaviness and then that twist in the tale; love’s gentleness!
What Gary Lightbody meant by this chorus was a million miles from where I want to apply these lyrics but there is a tenuous link. We don’t want a heavy love that is absent of gentleness. As Lightbody ponders this in respect to romance I want to apply it to matters of faith. For a period of centuries Christianity has come across as the weight of love. It has been robust for sure, in many ways shaping the very society and laws we take for granted and don’t even think of giving it credit for. I suggest though that we have sold Christian faith as heavy but bereft of gentleness. We have held truth with arrogance and judgementalism rather than humility and grace.
An Abraham Lincoln quote used in an episode of Criminal Minds comes to mind – “I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice.” That is “the weight of love, so gentle in your arms.”
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