What is Love?

Today it seems like every time I turn around I am confronted with weddings. Not just from friends, but from businesses, and billboards, and even casual conversations that I pass by in restaurants. In short, today's weddings are a business; machines programmed to gobble up money faster than tech stocks in 2000. After thinking on this a while, I concluded that it almost seems as though the focus of marriage is more on the ceremony, than on its true purpose..........love. Now, I don't believe every wedding falls into this trap, but unmistakably more and more are getting sucked into the wedding ceremony snowball.

I do believe that these extravagantly expensive weddings do have some symbolism. They symbolize what love has come to mean to marriage today. The view is a romantically, and idealistically seen idea that is more pomp and circumstance, than reality. So, the question I am posing through all this is, what is love?

The basis for answering this question is one that is found throughout the Bible. Two sets of verses that have been on my heart, include (1 Corinthians 13:4-8, and 1 John 3: 16-18) From what I know, studying these words, love is not: always happy, always perfect, always positive, always joyful. Love is more commitment, perseverance, and hard; rather than spontaneous, fleeting, and easy. I feel that today we see love more as something that we are entitled to receive, as opposed to a gift that we must give without the expectation of getting in return. Love is by no means simple, and does not protect against hurt and pain, rather it is very hard and serves as a median through which we can share the true essence of Christ. In 1 John 3:16-18, it is stated "by this we know love". We know love through Christ's gift to us. His unwavering resolve and commitment to experience the depth of pain and agony for us; all this without any expectation that we would return that love to Him. He is, and was given, for us and to save us, because he first loved us. So, how can we live under the commandment in John 13:34 to "love one another, just as I have loved you" without taking the vantage point of love, through any pain, and given without any thought of receiving?

Why is love so difficult? Because, it is the true median in which to share Christ. By loving to this depth, and placing others above yourself, what happens? You are in the position to show Christ, through an experience to others. What makes more of a lasting impression? Loving someone that you float with on cloud #9, or loving someone who has hurt you to depth of pain you never felt you could experience? When we love through our horrendous sufferings, they see it, and they feel it, and it has the power to change more deeply than is imagined.

How do you love this way? I believe this is part of sanctification. This kind of love is a continual process of growth. I can only say where it starts. It starts by taking a hard look at where love began, who first loved us, and realizing that love is more than that emotional feeling that you get in the pit of your stomach. It is deeper than happiness, and joy. Love is; placing yourself as a median through which others can have the opportunity to love back, not necessarily the expectation that they will. The hard part is that to those whom you give love, the choice not to love rest squarely on their shoulders, and you have no way of manipulating that choice. But, giving and giving and giving though no return is ever witnessed, is love. It is perseverance, it is discipline, it is suffering, it is hope, it is faith, it is perfect.

-Joshua