Thoughts About Real Love

I don’t know if it’s because February is Heart Health Month and hearts are a symbol of love, it’s Valentine’s Weekend or the movies that I’ve been watching, but I have love on the brain. Or is it my heart? Either way, here we are.

I suppose it began a couple weeks ago when I realized that my Cheerios were heart shaped. As I ate my way through that box one bowl at a time, I continued to think about love. At first, I thought about how General Mills loves that I buy Cheerios. Then the idea of love just began rooting itself in my thoughts.

Naturally, when thinking about love, one might be led to 1 Corinthians 13 – the “love” chapter or as the Apostle Paul called it, “the most excellent way.” It’s read at many weddings, select verses are quoted often and printed on all sorts of clothing and household items. It is rich and ripe with good stuff if we really dig into it.

In his description of love, Paul starts with it being patient. Do you think he did that on purpose? If we’re describing something or someone, we usually pick the big, obvious things first. It’s interesting to think about at least. You can spend days meditating on what love means and how that looks in your life. It’s kind. It’s not rude. It’s not proud. It’s not self-seeking (putting ourselves first). It never fails. It rejoices in the truth. Dwell on it and see how you and your relationships stack up.

Read on to the end of the chapter and verse 13 (NIV) says, “And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.” I like thinking about how those three pillars hold up. That’s how we know where to invest our energy – in those three things. They last. Even still, there’s something extra special about love.

That leads me to Matthew 22 where Jesus was asked about the greatest commandment. Jesus answers in verses 37-40, “’Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All of the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” Love is the common thread. The greatest commandments are about active love.

I have a sign over my bed that says, “Greatest Is Love.” I literally read those words every single day. I think maybe I’ve read them so much that some days they’ve lost their impact. Friends, I think many of us have this problem today. We’ve gotten so lost in heart shapes and fairy tale love that we’ve lost touch with real love.

Glance around at the world. I’m not sure that we’re consistently doing a great job of loving. My first thought was that we don’t know how to love our neighbor because we don’t know how to love ourselves. However, after much digging and reading, God has shifted my thinking. It isn’t about knowing how to love ourselves. That’s the wrong path because love isn’t self-seeking and that isn’t the example Jesus gave us. He wasn’t trying to love himself more. He was loving and obeying God.

Why do we so often glaze over the greatest commandment on the way to be focused on defining our neighbors? In 1 John chapter 4 we read that God is love and we love Him because He first loved us. If we don’t love God with all our heart, soul, and mind, then we can’t truly love anyone else. Perhaps we can love someone in a greeting card kind of way, at least for a while, but not in the 1 Corinthians way.

Loving God wholeheartedly is what makes it possible to love our neighbors as ourselves. He is the source of love. That is the love that is long-suffering and keeps no record of wrongs. That is the love that never fails.

Let’s not treat love like it’s any old thing. Love created you. Love died to save you. Love will keep you. Don’t boil it down to a t-shirt slogan or a wall hanging and let it lose its value. The greatest of these will always be love. Think about that.