What is Love?

“Love, a word that comes and goes; but few people really know what it means to really love somebody.” These lyrics from Kirk Franklin’s song Love always come to mind when I think about love. Love is a word that people tend to throw around loosely; I love football, I love food (which I really do), I love you. The second party of that line of lyrics says, “few people really know what it means to love”, I think that is so true. God shows us the perfect example of love, Jesus. When we look at His example of love for us, sending His only Son to die on a cross for people who would not love Him back, who would live a life of sin, can we say we know what love is? God’s love is unconditional. He knew before He created the world what we would all do, yet He created us anyway and provided a way (Jesus) to still live with Him forever in heaven. Wow! He loves us so much; He didn’t include any conditions on His love. Can we say the same? We add conditions to our love, especially to our spouse. We show love when our spouse is doing what we want them to do. Once our spouse does something we deem as unforgivable or just wrong, we want to take our love away. We often forget our vows where we committed to love our spouse through the good times and the bad times, through sickness and in health, for richer or for poorer. Your spouse may be going through a bad time in their life right now; instead of putting them down or not showing them love, maybe you should talk them to find out what the root of the issue may be. But that’s not convenient for us right? We want what we want when we want it. Meaning, we want our spouse to be where we want them to be when we want it and if they aren’t, we take our love away. Oh, but we want our spouse to love and understand where we are; we want them to forgive us for the things we do that might not be right but yet we don’t do the same. So, maybe we don’t really know what love is. God loves us where we are. That doesn’t mean He doesn’t want better for us, it just means He knows we are human and we will not get it right all the time but we should strive for better. That’s how we should look at our spouse; we should love them unconditionally where they are. They may not do the things we think they should be doing, which by the way should be the will of God for their life not your will for their life, but that doesn’t mean we stop loving them, that we don’t honor the vows we took before God. I think when you make the decision to love someone (in a romantic way), it becomes one of the hardest decisions you will make. You make that commitment to love no matter what and the scariest part is, you don’t know what the what can be. Maya Angelou said “It takes courage to love somebody; you have to risk everything”. And I agree, you do risk a lot when you decide to love but I think it is the greatest gift you can give someone, especially your spouse. Always remember the commitment you made to God and your spouse to love. Things may be hard but love always win in the end. God loves you unconditionally and requires you to love the same. So, are you putting conditions on your love for your spouse?

Be blessed...love y'all for real!

Chell