The Right Place

There’s an old country song by singer Johnny Lee called “Lookin’ for Love”.  While the song details the singer’s experience of looking for authentic love in his life, there is a line in the song that I think we could all relate to on a more general level.  The line in the chorus, “I was looking for love in all the wrong places, looking for love in too many faces” speaks a truth that we have probably all experienced at one time or another.

How many times have we looked to the world and those around us for love and approval?  We all want to be well-liked, to fit in, to be like everyone else.  We want to be accepted by society’s standards and for people to approve of what we believe and the way we live.  These desires and attitudes are all normal parts of being human.  But if we are looking for love from the world and our culture’s standards, we are looking in the wrong places.

Above all, we should be looking to Jesus.  His approval is the only approval we need.  If we seek to gain approval from anywhere else, it will ultimately fail us.  And if we keep searching the world waiting and hoping for everyone we meet to love us, we will be waiting a long time.  But if we stop and look at Jesus, whether on the cross, in the eucharist, or in scripture, we will find the love we are made for, a love that never fails, disappoints, or abandons us.
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Ask Jesus to reveal His love to you.  And then listen.  There is not a single moment that passes by in which we are not loved.  We just so often don’t notice or take time out of our days to recognize it, so then we just go searching for that love in all the wrong places.  When you are tempted to seek the world’s approval, look to Jesus.  When you look to Him, you are in the right place.