If you’ve ever seen the Broadway musical, Avenue Q, one of the climactic songs in that play is talking about the fine, fine line of love. The song goes, “there’s a fine, fine line between love and waste of time” that line speaks to the existence of humanity these days. Here at school, my friends often use the phrase gray area, we love a world of black and white, but sometimes we need to live in the gray.

            This week many people will be celebrating a certain type of love. Valentine’s Day is an incredible chance to express love to friends, spouses and partners in a very tangible way. Many of us will celebrate with chocolates, teddy bears, a nice dinner and flowers. Our hearts are full of love and cherishing each other, in a world bent on hate we’d be content to sit and not love our neighbors, friends, spouses and our world.

            I recently went to Discovery Place in Charlotte to see the mummy exhibit that is going on right now. I learned from the Egyptian Book of the Dead, that in the ancient Egyptian religions, it was believed that when you died your soul would go to final judgment before passing onto the Great Beyond. The deceased soul’s heart would be weighed against a feather. If the heart had been good and true it would weigh less than the feather and pass onto paradise. If the heart had been full of hate, it would weigh more than the feather and was condemned to the Egyptian form of Hades. I tell you this because we often feel that it is easier to hate than it is to love, but as my best friend often has to remind me, “the easy road is generally the wrong road.”

            Here is my challenge to you this week. Weigh your heart. Weigh your heart through the lens and context of faith, and see what it looks like. If our lives lived fully are what God intends for them to be, then God in infinite grace and love will welcome us with open arms. We just have to continually search for that meaning, that context in which we should live.

            I have a friend who is leaving the university to return home for the semester. After going through a rough time this friend decided it was best to take a break from the hustle and bustle of the university setting. As I sat with my friend the other night after hearing this, I was reminded of my love for her and her importance in my life. As I weighed my heart like I challenged you to do I realized something that speaks to my friend leaving. The quote came to mind, “Love is not a matter of what happens in life.  It's a matter of what's happening in your heart.”   

            Though my friend may be leaving I know that she has such a special place in my heart. As I stared at those mummies at Discovery Place and read that phrase about the Book of the Dead, I was reminded that God created us through the ages to love, to share and to be loved. So yes, there is a fine, fine line between love and a waste of time. But my question to you is: which side of the line do you fall on?