All About Love

The topic of love has come up several times in reading and conversation of late.

Yesterday, I had a great conversation with a dear friend about love, and how often we mistake it for an emotion. That is to say, the movies teach us that love is when you meet someone and there are fireworks, or your stomach flips over, or something electric like that. But that isn't love - that's infatuation and sentiment. And a silly thing on which to base a life with someone.

Then today I checked out another friend's new blog, where he was talking about much the same thing.

And then today's sermon was about how God is love, and that His love is real and complete and unconditional and he showed it by taking residence in human flesh and dying for us. And that the sentence stops there - God loves us. No "but..." at the end of that.

Love is an action. Or maybe it's better said that it's a series of actions and choices. When I am angry with a friend, I choose to love anyhow. I don't break off the friendship. When a person is angry with his or her spouse, he or she chooses to love that person - through forgiveness, through discussion, or even just by staying.

Sometimes I wonder about how we make things rocket science that aren't. You choose love or you don't. Seems simple, right?

But it isn't. Because sometimes it costs us something - some time, some money, the right to be right, our pride. For Jesus it cost his life. That's the example we are supposed to follow.

I hope people see in me that kind of love.