Love Is

One night I was driving home while talking to my Mom and, being in an uncharacteristically emotional state, I began to cry.  I was talking to her about my boyfriend.  After hearing me talk through sobs, she asked why I am dating him [still].  I told her three reasons immediately as I wiped tears: 1) he's a good guy and likes me, 2) for some reason, he wants to be with me, and 3) I think I love him. 

What is love, though?  In a sense, I didn't know then and don't feel as though I really know even now.  Or maybe it's more along the lines of the fact that your mind's understanding of things of this nature grows and deepens as you experience them truly or just simply again and again and again.

Most saw love when they grew up with parents and take it for granted, at least I did.  I still see how my parents love me every day as an adult; it's these days of experiencing it over and over that's helped me bring it to spotlight status.  Now, some see and experience love in marriage.  Obviously I'm not there yet, though I see glimpses of true love and my attempts to display it while I'm in the dating camp.  I fail; I even told my boyfriend that I don't love him well and I don't show him God's love ...and again that crying thing happened.  I admit that I am definitely seeing how selfish I am, not loving.  I'm out for me, my comfort and my norm.  It does not go over well. 

Thankfully, I see love and experience love deeply with God.  Jesus loves me.  Jesus loves you.  It's so simple, and yet, we miss it.  I'm given the opportunity to stop and think about it in my organized Bible study and it is so deep and freeing and personable and constant and forever and the list goes on!

Possibly we miss God's love because we are busy with our definition or the worlds definition of it or because we're too busy trying to obtain it from people, pets, places, or pizza.  (I just had to keep going with the p's. Ha!)  Seriously, there are a lot of definitions or pictures of love out in society.  

I think of what the world says love is or how it appears -- acceptance, positivity, surface level, sheer, doing it your way, sex, passion, desire.  Not to mention the unattainable world of Hollywood, Disney, and the like.  Not every scene will burst into song, there are not rainbows and butterflies constantly in the sky, there is not always a knight in shining armor, the guy does not really know your next line or move, there's not always a happily ever after, etc.  You may think I'm terribly depressed and I have no romantic bone in my body but that is false.  I'm just not seeing things with rosy painted glasses.  And let's not begin to talk about the promise of finding love with just a swipe or whatever. 

Moving on, the literal definition of love in Webster's dictionary includes the following:

1. A profoundly tender, passionate affection for another person

2. A feeling of warm personal attachment or deep affection, as for a parent, child, friend

3. Sexual passion or desire

4. Affectionate concern for the well-being of others

5. Strong predilection, enthusiasm, or liking of anything

I'll let you take that as it is. 

I heard a new definition tonight as love "looking at the highest good of another."  Oh, goodness.  I do not do this.  I am always comparing people to myself -- "I would not say that," "I would never do that," "Well, I would've done it like this" or I would've said this" -- because, obviously, my way is the best way.  Man, my heart is ugly.  Grateful my family, boyfriend, and friends forgive me and show me love! 

My mind is ugly too, but I filled it once with a good book called "Love Does," in which love is portrayed as an action.  I liked it and thought what the author was saying was true.  I just need that lasting and unquenchable example of love in my life. 

So, what does God have to say about love?  He says:

Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal.  And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.  And though I'm still all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing.  **Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, it's not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails.** 

This is love. And though I have a long way to go, I know God is changing my heart every step of the way.

I know this because God has given me the greatest example, which was giving his Son to die on the cross for my sins.  For God so loved the world that he gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.