What About Love?

A quick check of trending Twitter topics often include hashtags that involve the word, “love.” There are memes about love and movies about love. Music has a whole genre devoted to love. Songs tell us that love, sweet love, is what the world needs now, that love will keep us together, that love is a battlefield, and that love can build a bridge.

We have all heard sentences begin with, “If he loved you, he wouldn’t do such and such,” and “If she really loved you, she wouldn’t have said so and so.” Maybe you and I have started some our own sentences with something very similar.

Love. The word itself gets thrown about quite liberally, and so do opinions on it. Beliefs abound on what it should look like and sound like. How it should act and react. Unfortunately, we get bombarded by several worldly views and versions of love. Take just a moment to determine how many times you hear made-up definitions of love that are not drowning in self-centeredness and superficiality?

Recently, this thought has occurred to me: what if we quit assigning our own meanings to love and instead went directly to the Originator of love to determine what it truly is? Can you imagine what would happen if we would decide to immerse ourselves in God’s Word, which so wonderfully displays His pure and perfect love? If we would learn it and then live it? We would do well to educate ourselves on His definition, espouse it as our own, and strive to excel at living it out.

1 Corinthians 13:4-7 is arguably the most popular passage in the Bible regarding love. It reads: 4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

That is quite a list! If we strive to adhere to that list of verses when we love others, then the first three words of the very next verse (1 Corinthians 4:8) will show itself to be true: ‘Love never fails.’

Conversely, the worldly views of love that we are seemingly inundated with are prone to failure.

The instructions on how to give true, unfailing love are found in God’s Inspired Word, which we have wide-open access to.

Therefore, we can choose to research the real meaning and choose to reject the world’s meaning. We can choose to show the real meaning and choose to shun the world’s meaning.

Lord, with Your help, please help us live out true, unfailing love. Amen.