A short four letter word that says so much. And so little. It is the example of an all loving, holy God toward His people. We see His love in the creation He made. The beautiful butterfly. The majestic tree. The delicate flower. Plants that give air and food...our very life source. A sky that brings thirst quenching rain and healing sunshine. Even the ground beneath our feet holds a medicine to our bodies that only a caring creator could have envisioned and put in place.
Love is the very definition of a parents commitment and care for their child. A newborn baby would die within days lest someone cared enough to tend to it. A parent guides a toddler away from danger because the idea of them being injured hurts the parent. Love for their child has a parent stepping back and letting them go when the parent would rather hold them close and keep them little.
Love. It is all that we are. It is like the air we breathe and the water we drink. It flows through us in so many ways.
Love. That very word is beginning to take different, less pure, meanings these days. It is the oft flaunted term for 'accept me for whatever I want to do', 'embrace my sin', 'do not speak ill of me in any way'. It has even come to mean 'allow me to do anything I want to'.
In the last week I have seen the word love written on more articles of clothing than I can count. It's there, sweet and innocent, but without the innocence it should hold. Still, Scripture speaks of love. It tells us so much of what love is. In fact, 1 Corinthians 13 gives us the very definition of love.
If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3 If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned,[a] but have not love, I gain nothing.
4 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;[b] 6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
8 Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. 11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. 12 For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.
13 So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
My intent here is not to set out guidelines for what love is...we already have them in Scripture...but to expand on some thoughts I have had since writing my last post on love. I am sure just about everyone has been accused of not being very loving in their life. I have even heard parents tell children 'that's not very loving'.
Do you ever notice that most of the time when one person accuses another of not being loving, that their accusation stems from their own idea of what it means to show love to another?
Yes, we have Scripture to set the guidelines on what love is. Those that follow Scripture should strive to follow that definition of love. But sometimes love shows up in different ways for different people.
I have a relative that never met a stranger. Literally from toddlerhood on this relative embraced (for lack of a better word) everyone she met. Warnings that not everyone is nice, warnings that all people aren't your friend, warnings of any kind were like nothing to this relative. They simply did not sink in.
I watched this relative grow up. And I watched people be drawn to her unlike anything I had ever seen before. This relative of mine loved people and they loved her in return. She was like a ray of bright sunshine in the life of every person that ever crossed her path. A brief encounter with a stranger in town left them happy as they departed, happy to have been graced by the presence of my relative. It was astonishing to say the least.
I still marvel at how she was able to make people happy simply because she was there. As a child she had a bright infectious smile that she turned on everyone. As an adult, the smile is still there and she still hands it out freely. But it's not just her smile. It's something deep inside her. She is able to pour love onto everyone she meets and they can feel it during even the briefest of encounters with her.
Love never came to me like it did to her. I was never graced with the ability to spread love like a flower girl in a wedding spreads rose petals, dropping it with every step I took. I never saw a strangers day turn around simply because I graced them with my presence.
I have rarely been rude or short with people that pass my way (although there were times past when my temper got the better of me and I did speak harshly to strangers, usually those that were mean to my kids). I am friendly to those that I encounter. But I do not have the ability to ooze love on everyone. Not like my relative does.
And I have tried.
I have spent a good deal of time studying 1 Corinthians 13 the last few months. I have even handwritten it. Four times. Pondering each word. Absorbing it. Taking it to heart. Taking my heart apart in light of it.
And you know what?
I've come to the conclusion that love does not look the same for everyone. Love is not always oozed through every pore of a person's being. Love may not fall from someone's lips like rain from a rain cloud. Some people show love in every action they make, every expression, every word. Some people show love in a more reserved, behind the scenes kind of way, and some people fall somewhere in between on the spectrum of how they show love.
Everyone can ooze love on someone. Everyone does ooze love on someone. Love flows between people like an invisible thread, connecting us to those closest to us, connecting us to everyone we meet.
I remember as a kid, first encountering the idea that love does not diminish, it only grows. 1 Corinthians 13 in the Geneva Bible says, 'love is bountiful'.
Love is huge.
It grows. It swells and encompasses. It is never ending. It's capacity for growth does not stop. Love is bountiful. I think that may be my favorite part of 1 Corinthians 13, unless my favorite part is 'love endures all things' or 'If I ...have not love, I am a noisy gong..."
But...love, I have come to the conclusion of, does not look the same to all people. Not only do we all show love in different ways but...we all interpret love in different ways.
I have only recently begun to realize just how far reaching that statement is. How much our own idea of what love is influences just how we see, feel, and give love to others.
A month or so ago I realized that I am a person that must see love to feel love. In other words it does not matter if someone tells me they love me, saying 'I love you' are only words. I have said those three little words many times in my life and not meant them. It was a product of certain expectations on me during my childhood. I learned to say 'I love you' even when I did not love someone.
So for me, being told 'I love you' is only words. I must see and feel love to feel loved.
Once that realization set in my eyes were opened to some other things as well. I may not ooze love like my relative does. I may not be every person I meet's best friend. I may go quietly about my life but that does not mean I am not showing love. I have used my relative as the measuring stone for what it looks like to love others for years, and for years I was striving for a goal I could not attain.
Then came the slow realizations, one on top of another, that opened my eyes to the fact that love has many forms. And that it shows up for each of us in different ways.
I have come to the conclusion that we hand out love based on how we feel love. I need to see and feel love therefore I show love by doing. I write letters. I buy gifts. I do laundry. I set aside my own needs to focus on someone else.
My husband has this very endearing...sometimes maddening...way of seeing life through 'I was never like that' or 'I never wanted those kinds of things' and therefore he tends to think everyone else is that way too. I remind him often that he is unlike anyone else, that no one else is like him, and that no one else sees things that way.
But I am coming to the conclusion that we all view life that way. Our version of life, and our view of other people, is seen through our own eyes and experiences. I once saw something that said 'you' are someone different to everyone because everybody has their own idea of who you are and who you really are does not match any of those versions other people have in mind of you because you are all of those versions of 'you' and none of them. You're bigger than what others see of you.
And so we all love based on our idea of what love is. What it is for us to feel love, what it takes for us to feel it. And we hold others to expectations they cannot meet because we need them to show love based on our idea of what love looks and feels like.
1 Corinthians 13 gives us the very definition of what love is and it gives us an idea of how to live that out but there is also a huge variance for how that love is shown. Sometimes love is oozed like a heavy rain, pouring down on all in it's path, sometimes love blows through like a tornado, touching here and there but effecting everyone, and sometimes love is a slow gentle mist. Or maybe it's even tucked in a corner somewhere, quiet but flowing out to all who come within it's grasp.
Love is shown in a variety of ways and all too often those ways do not show up the same in each person. And so...love. Love is patient. Love is kind...
Love is bountiful.
Love grows and expands. It flows from one of us to another. It is smoothed on like the softest of silks, gentle and embracing, it is whispered through the air and flutters against someone like the softest of butterfly wings brushing your skin, it is poured on in correction, hurting the heart as it strives to save the person in the wrong.
Love is handed out through hugs and gifts. It is delivered through the mail in a written letter. It is given as a gift wrapped with more love than wrapping paper. It is shown by setting aside your own wants or needs to focus on someone else. It is being a friend to a stranger. It's treating the unlovable like your beloved brother. It's a clean house so all that live there can enjoy it. It's clean clothes in a closet. It's food in the kitchen so no one goes hungry. It's a home that looks like a tornado blew threw because a toddler lives there and messes are better than constant scoldings. It's money given away. It's a handmade quilt. It's...
Whatever form love takes for the person giving the love.
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