True Love

Love makes the world go round.  Love is a many splendored thing.  All you need is love.  I love old dogs and children and watermelon wine.  I love my pick-up truck.  I don't know your name but I think I love you.  I love chocolate.  I love your hair.  Where's the love?

Of all the song lyrics, affirmations and cliches, the one that's most appropriate for us and needed to be taken seriously by us is that last one: Where's the love?  We tend to use it flippantly or out of any real context, but it is the central question that needs to be answered above all others.  By and large, we don't know where to find love or even how to recognize it should they encounter it along the way.

As a society, we have so misused the word that we have lost it's meaning and are misled as to it's true nature.  Do we really love our trucks and someone's hairstyle?  Does our world really spin on the  axis of love?  Do we engage our daily walk in love?  How can we even know what love is?

I'm going to give you a simple answer that will take a lifetime of uncovering the layers of it's full meaning.  But it will set you on a path of discovery that will result in your coming to understand love in the fullest capacity you can in this life.  Are you ready for it?  Begin to digest these words, which define true love: "This is how love is made complete among us...in this world, we are like Jesus" (1 Jn 4:17).  Simple isn't it?  Be like Jesus.  But the depth of understanding how Jesus thought and why he reacted the way he did and how he treated others requires a lifetime of prayer, study and practice.

Jesus could be bold and humble, tender and tough, patient and insistent - all the while acting in love.  Love is a choice but the choices made out of love are not always easy or simple.  They can be very tough on you and require you to be tough on another.  They can also come so easy and be so gentle.  It is in understanding an following the example of Jesus that true love emerges.

So, it's simple enough for all to begin the path of true love and challenging enough to take a lifetime of working it out.  True love is exists, it's name is Jesus.  Follow his lead.  Jus' Sayn.