Love is a curious thing. It can strike with such strong and convincing blows we are nearly knocked unconscious at first sight. Yet on other occasions, love creeps in like the first hint of light before the dawn. Slowly but steadily it rises, invading the immediate space until finally it crests in the horizon. With each perceivable advance it moves and soon warmth surrounds everything that was once cold and dark. Love is a powerful thing.
Love is a fascinating thing. At what point do we learn to love? The moment our first child was born I remember looking into my child's eyes for the very first time. A moment engraved forever in memory. An instant connection, a moment in all time, acknowledgment of father for child and child for father. It was love, to be sure. It still feels like yesterday. Closing my eyes as my fingers stroke these keys, I go back to that precise moment, every detail perfectly retrievable. Love is a powerful thing.
Love is a wonderful thing. To love or to be loved... which is the greater? The altruist responds of course, "To love." But to be truly loved is amazing and transcends words. This is certainly why lovers are temporarily content to simply sit and be close. No words need be spoken. Even touch is unnecessary. Simply being near and getting to "be" together is enough and yet, at the same time it is not. It is never enough when one is truly loved. Love is a powerful thing.
Love is perfect. Yet, we are not. How it is we ever come to love in the first place? To experience the love of another and to express love ourselves is something of a mystery. It is as if we glance by love, as dipping a finger into the icing of a wonderful cake, but not able to cut a full slice and eat. Love, in its fullest sense remains illusive and ambiguous. Will I ever love as I am designed to love? Will anyone ever receive greater love as a result of my expression of it?
How then shall we love? Will our love improve? "We love because he [God] first loved us" (1 John 4:19). If love is to improve -- if we are to better learn to receive it and to better dispense it -- we must love the One who first loved us.
Lord, please teach us to love!
"God is love. Whoever live in love lives in God, and God in him."
1 John 4:16
1 John 4:16
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