St Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 13:1 about this open secret and it is the main sermon at many a wedding ceremony but do we understand it at all? I think not. If you sk each of the 7 billion people on earth to define love you will get 7 billion different definitions. I like St Pauls definition because it is the hardest to do and the one that I have experienced from God. So I will stick to that in this post. It Goes like this ;
1 Corinthians 13 The Message (MSG)
The Way of Love
13 If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don’t love, I’m nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate.
2 If I speak God’s Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, “Jump,” and it jumps, but I don’t love, I’m nothing.
3-7 If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don’t love, I’ve gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I’m bankrupt without love.
Love never gives up.
Love cares more for others than for self.
Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have.
Love doesn’t strut,
Doesn’t have a swelled head,
Doesn’t force itself on others,
Isn’t always “me first,”
Doesn’t fly off the handle,
Doesn’t keep score of the sins of others,
Doesn’t revel when others grovel,
Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,
Puts up with anything,
Trusts God always,
Always looks for the best,
Never looks back,
But keeps going to the end.
Love cares more for others than for self.
Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have.
Love doesn’t strut,
Doesn’t have a swelled head,
Doesn’t force itself on others,
Isn’t always “me first,”
Doesn’t fly off the handle,
Doesn’t keep score of the sins of others,
Doesn’t revel when others grovel,
Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,
Puts up with anything,
Trusts God always,
Always looks for the best,
Never looks back,
But keeps going to the end.
8-10 Love never dies. Inspired speech will be over some day; praying in tongues will end; understanding will reach its limit. We know only a portion of the truth, and what we say about God is always incomplete. But when the Complete arrives, our incomplete will be canceled.
11 When I was an infant at my mother’s breast, I gurgled and cooed like any infant. When I grew up, I left those infant ways for good.
12 We don’t yet see things clearly. We’re squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won’t be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We’ll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us!
13 But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation: Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love.
Wow! give yourself a pat in the back if you love like this. If love is looking so difficult to do from where I am standing, Why is it the greatest commandment of all? Every religion has this one unifying factor. LOVE. Why will God ask us to love if it was impossible.
Because we have been given the ability to do so. It is also written that God has shed His love in our hearts by the Holy Spirit. Basically its like a mother sending her child to the corner shop to buy milk and not giving them money.Will they do that? No. So why will God? If you cannot buy milk without money neither can you love without having the ability to do so. The issue then is what the child chooses to do with the money. Do they go and buy milk or sweets and if they choose sweets, what will that mean for the family breakfast and what will the mother do about it?
So we have a situation with this same thing love. The ability to love has been given to every person on this earth and we can ask for deeper love if we want and it will be given to us. Whether we are keen believers in God or staunch atheists God still gives in great measures because the universe is kept together and in order by Love. What we choose to do with love is another thing. The belief in the non existence of God is usually based on the fact that there is so much suffering and atrocities and if God existed then this would not be. So will the rest of the family blame the mum for no milk because the child sent to buy the milk decided to spend it unwisely and buy sweets instead, depriving the entire family of milk for breakfast or whatever the need for milk was? I think they will be mad at the child not the mum.
The same should hold true for love. Love is this invisible power that keeps everything in balance and every human being carries a sufficient amount to give to others to keep the universe in balance. If we decide to take advantage of it by with holding it or manipulating it then should we blame God for the atrocities that result? I don't think so.
Love is really a magic portion. The most potent there is. it inspires, invigorates, initiates, regenerates and restores faith in humanity. When you love something it grows and becomes better and you grow and become a better person as well. So love is mutually beneficial. The interesting thing is that the greatest commandment is not to be loved but to love because if each of us love the other everyone will be loved and no one will be left out.
St Paul tells us that unless we love, we are nothing. So why will we be nothing? I have been thinking about this. I realised that it is because without love we can enjoy nothing. The big house, fancy cars, expensive jewellery, luxury holidays, fine dining and the best jobs in the world will not bring us satisfaction. Neither sexual pleasures no extremities will give us satisfaction. Because love is the ingredient that makes them all worthwhile. When you love, you live. When you don't love you die. You see, you become a dead man walking when you you are loveless. You make decisions like a soulless being. You loose your humanity without love. You become a beast so to speak. Even some beasts show signs of love to their mates and young. To love is to care about another's welfare as well as your own. To empathise with another and make decisions concerning them as if you were their shoes.
When you love you light up the world. Literally you become the light of the world. You light up your corner of the universe. You become the sun around which everyone else revolves. Love is so powerful. It elevates and compensates, it promotes and strengthens, its respects and honours, it creates and jubilates. Love is the constant overflowing of ecstasy expressed in diverse forms all for the ultimate purpose of peace on earth and goodwill to all men. Jesus once said that greater love has no man than to lay his life down for another.
Wow, does he mean dying for someone? If it comes to that I guess, But More so denying yourself something is equivalent to death to self so someone else can live. In our society where looking after number one is our ultimate ambition how can love be expressed? If there is only one cab, I want to be the one that gets it because its too cold or raining and I don't want to be stranded, If the bus is late and there are more people than places on it I want to cut the line and push until I am not left behind.
I must admit I have done both of those and each time I hear a voice in my head saying how will you like it if someone did this to you? That has not stopped me from doing it though. So we all like the nice things in life and as we were discussing in the last post we all love to be loved in the way we can appreciate and recognise it as love, which is our love language.
But should we focus on our love language or our spouse's? Should it always be about us. I am beginning to realise that I feel dissatisfied and empty when its all about me and I must admit that sometimes I feel trapped in that state. When it is not all about me I can hardly function. So I began to actively pursue the love that is not about me. Yes a very difficult task indeed. however I realised it is one thing to be loved it is a totally different thing to Love. I can tell you without repentance that it is more blessed to love than to be loved.
There is a sense of wholeness and completeness when you do a selfless act for another which is completely different than when someone does one for you. Its magnifies exponentially. Its as if the big bang has just taken place. If you could see your self as a light substance you will see that the light in you explodes into so many different directions and brings such illumination the universe is better for it.
Truly in order to dispel darkness we should just be the light. Love is that light. We can talk and criticize and debate and point fingers and shake our heads and deny the existence of God or Love but when we give out love there is no denial that it does exist and it is the best feeling in the universe.
So what am I trying to say. I am a feeling person. I do everything from the heart. I make decisions from the heart and if I cannot I do not compromise. I will leave that decision until I feel it.
Can you imagine if my heart was taken away and I have a gaping hole left in it? oh by the way our true heart is bigger than our heart organ on our body. It is our soul. A soulless person is a zombie and is incapable of love.
I think that in situations of the heart when we are involved in a relationship we think that we can only give love as much as we get it. But it should not be so. Love is for giving (forgiving). It is not love if it has not been given. We must evolve to a plain of conciousness where we give love not as a reward for receiving love but as the reason for our being. In a relationship it is quite difficult. Our first reaction to a loveless situation is to shrink from loving in order to protect out own hearts. However our hearts die slowly as we continue to so called protect it from hurting by withholding love. Love grows as we venture to give it. Like the 5 loaves of bread and two fishes it can feed five thousand. Love may hurt but that hurt reminds us that we are alive and kicking.
If we have no love we cannot function properly. We are all beings of Love and light and without love we are truly nothing. So instead of going around the world looking for love and feeling that space in our hearts with all these things, lets reach out to someone and show some love and guess what?; we will feel our love space light up with a big Bang.
