03FEB2019 | What is Love?

THERE IS A CASE TO BE MADE THAT IN THE HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE ONE WORD MORE THAN ANY OTHER HAS BEEN MISUSED AND ABUSED with truly horrific and unintended consequences. It's a four-letter word that probably has been the source of more hatred than anything George Carlin could have imagine.

LOVE.

Simply by seeing the word, chances are good there have been more than a few thoughts and images that have come to your mind.

One of the more unfortunate things about how the Bible has been translated into English over the years is there are more than a few words in the original languages that have come to us in English as 'love.'

In one of his most well-known passages, Paul dives into the idea of the greatest of the gifts is love. What is truly amusing about officiating weddings is so many people have the impression this relates to the love between a man and a woman as they establish life together as one in God's sight, when, in fact, there is not a marriage in the world that does not need as its foundation the love to which Paul is referring to here.

As we move into the second half of our series on HATE:Enough is Enough, we explore 1 Corinthians 13, picking up what love should look like as we seek to live with ourselves and one another.

Chances are good that if we all embraced the reality of love, rather than sentimental emotionalism that is so often attached to the word, ours would be a life of less hatred.

Chances are good that if we all embraced the idea that love manifests itself differently in each of us because, as we discovered last week, everyone is different, and we might find ourselves a little more understanding of another, rather than allowing ourselves to get wrapped up in knots because someone is not operating exactly as we think they should, ours would be a life of less hatred.

Chances are good that if we all embraced the idea that love is God-focused and not self- or other-focused, we might find ourselves more at peace with God, others, and, most of all, ourselves.

Chances are good that if we embrace the idea that love is first and foremost an emotion, subject to the whims that everyone's emotions are in life, hatred will fester within our hearts and minds as we will be focused on feelings rather than reality. This is not to say that feelings are not important, but for us to truly love as God intends, we must be mature enough to see that love being a constant is PRECISELY what we need to withstand the emotional buffeting of the waves of life in a fallen world.