It apparently makes the world go round and it’s also, apparently, ‘the answer’. We want it, we need it, and I’m as convinced as ever, that we aren’t quite complete without it. Of course, I’m talking about good ol’ L-O-V-E. It would be a very safe bet to assume that most songs or pieces of music are inspired by love. Want it, have it, lost it, sad without it, need it, found it. Love, love and more love. What has broken more hearts, or set more hearts ablaze? Yeah, we all get the point, but what is the power behind it? How can this love thing just hold in its hand, the key to our contentment, or our misery? Its power seems other-worldly. I agree, Huey Lewis, the power of love is a curious thing. So how is that it ‘turns a hawk into a little white dove’?
I think I have some insight into this. If God made us, in His own image (Gen 1:26) and God is love (1 John 4:8) it would suggest to me in the simplest terms, that we are made with a desire to be loved, the capacity to thrive when loved, and a built-in ability to love because it would be an expression out of our very make up! God loves us. This is a truth even the staunchest non-believer has heard expressed somewhere in their lives. It’s true. God’s entire plan from the very beginning, was to pour His love out on us. That’s His very nature, and why He made man. Even after sin entered the world, He acted out of His nature to ban Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, but He never stopped loving them. He promised a Saviour, even in the midst of His disappointment. (Gen 3:15), and that Love (John 3:16) was expressed throughout the pages of the Bible and culminated at the Cross. Because God loved us first, we can love others, and do good to them. That love is so strong, that when we fully understand it, we should be able to do good without the need for it to be reciprocated, because we won’t feel like we’re serving out of a place of a love vacuum. Have you ever noticed how hurt, unloved people will accept any old expression of love just to feel that contentment? How can you ever give away something that you don’t have?
As you allow these thoughts to spurn you on to deeper thinking, why not evaluate and ask yourself if you really feel loved. Search for and spend time thinking about those verses of the Bible that deal with God’s love for you, and how incredible life becomes when you live from a place of a full ‘love tank’. When you are confident in your ‘love identity’ then the way you treat others, and the way you respond to the treatment of others, will change. 1 Corinthians 13:13 expresses that there are 3 virtues that carry us from where we are now to what were hope to be in the future, and that is faith, hope and love; but the greatest of these is love. It’s now time to accept what is freely offered, to soak it up, and out of the excess, to share it. There’s a broken world out there that needs to be reminded of what we’ve just chatted about, so don’t just sit there; go and tell someone that they are loved, and teach them what it means to love back. That’s what a true disciple would do.