Dear sister,
I just finished watching a TV show where a side story was about love. Two characters are discussing it when the romantic asks his literal and cerebral girlfriend to list three reasons why she loves him. She answers matter of factly, because he loves her, he loves their daughter, and he has an amazing physique. He smiles. Then she asks him why he loves her: “I don’t need a reason.” She smiles coyly and shyly says how romantic that was. My own left-brain spins its own questions: Is love something that I will never be able to define, only feel? Can I lose or forget it? Will it really last forever? I hear my friends tell my daughter they love her and I tell my nieces and nephews that I love them. Is this the same love I have for my own daughter and husband?
I scanned my book titles to help me define love. I found some on adultery, on keeping the marriage pure, rekindling marriage, dating, parenting, and even one on loving to eat and hating to eat. None purely on what love is. Ahhhh, but there is one! It’s the oldest love story ever written and gives the true meaning of love. It tells of a married couple living in a garden who made a life ending choice that deserved death. They didn’t die right away because love promised them a deliverer to pay for their evil choice. They decided to trust in this promise and love gave them life.
Their children and children’s children continued to choose to do evil yet some of them put their trust in love’s promised deliverer. This deliverer would come and defeat the death that cursed their lives. Those who trusted in this promised one who defines love, lived forever with no curse! Then one day it happened…the promised deliverer came to earth to live like us as man, but who never chose to do evil. He lived a perfect life, loving God the Father and loving all mankind. Then in this love, he died. He was tortured and killed because of this love. But on the third day…he rose again! He conquered the curse that gives death and put His love on all those that trust and believe in Him. And this love will bring him back again to take those who trust Him to paradise!
Oh man, this is love! God is love. Jesus is love. 1 John 4:9-11 says: “This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.” Love is totally committed for another’s good. Love dies for the unlovely. Love serves the ungrateful. Love is faithful though His friends and family are not. “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails” (1 Cor 13:4-8a).
So YES!! Love can be defined…God is love. Because of what Jesus did on the cross, defeating death and giving us His righteousness I can never lose or forget love. And YES!! It really does last forever. Do we need a reason to love? It may be romantic to say no, but how amazing is it to have the ultimate reason to love not only our husbands, children, family, and friends, but also all our neighbors? Jesus is this reason. Is your love defined by Him? Sweet sister, do you love others because Christ loves you? What a great time of year to answer this question as we remember when love came down to earth. Merry Christmas!
Colleen