We’re finally here! The word we’ve all been waiting for. The word we all long to hear and the word we all wish we could get right more often. I am excited! This is going to be a glorious yet challenging three chapters. “Wait! Three Chapters?” you ask. Yep. Three! I thought about cramming it all into one, but that proved to be a ludicrous idea which led to another ludicrous idea…that I could teach or discuss or even just chat about love at all.
Then God reminded me that He agrees. In no way, shape, or form am I an expert on love, except for maybe on how not to love. And guess what? Neither are you. And neither is anyone who claims that they are or that they’ve got this love thing down. The only expert is God!
God also reminded me, yet again, that I am not writing as an expert or someone who has perfected loving one another. I am simply sharing my life notes from Jesus’ course on the Art of Loving One Another. I know I’m not the only one trying to pay attention and wanting to do well throughout life. So get out your own life notes and let’s share, shall we? Notice, I said share, not compete or condemn or compare. I am slowly learning there is a difference.
Love is the most sought after commodity in the world. Don’t believe me. Just watch a little television, surf the Internet for a while, or browse through your local bookstore. From the very creation of man, humans have been on a quest for love. Everyone has an opinion about it.
- “At the touch of love, everyone becomes a poet.” Plato
- “You know you are in love when you can’t fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.” Dr. Seuss
- “All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love.” Leo Tolstoy
- “Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.” Aristotle
- “Do you love me because I am beautiful, or am I beautiful because you love me?” Cinderella
- “Gravitation cannot be held responsible for people falling in love.” Albert Einstein
- “I hold it true, whatever befall; I feel it, when I sorrow most. ‘Tis better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all.” Lord Alfred Tennyson
- “If Jack’s in love, he’s no judge of Jill’s beauty.” Benjamin Franklin
- “All you need is love.” John Lennon and Paul McCartney
- “Love sought is good, but giv’n unsought is better.” William Shakespeare
- “Nothing takes the taste out of peanut butter quite like unrequited love.” Charlie Brown
The ancients talked about love, wrote about love, sang about love, and mused about love. Modern man does the same with just a few different twists. We email about love, tweet about love, text about love, fly airplane banners about love, and build billboards about love. And occasionally, we still write in the sand about love and send the message in a bottle about love because it’s just so romantic. But even with the oceans full of discussions about love, humans cannot agree on the most basic thing about love. What is it?
We love chocolate, pizza, and apple pie. We also love broccoli, spinach, and green beans. We love the $.99 taco and the $100 filet mignon. We love our Reeboks and our five inch stilettos. We love our slim jeans and our little black dress. Or at least we love the idea that we could be a size so we could love those! We love our jobs, our neighborhoods, our places of worship, and our homes. We love our week on the beach and our nap in our cozy lounge chair. We love our SUV and our 10-speed bike. We love Sax Fifth Avenue and the flea market down the street.
We love Gone with the Wind and The Little Mermaid. We love Shakespeare and Charlie Brown. We love Matt Damon and Meryl Streep. We love Casting Crowns, Celine Deon, John Newton, and the Beatles. We love Beth Moore and Kay Arthur and at the same time, love Oprah Winfrey and Judge Judy. We love George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, and we love Shrek and The Little Engine that Could.
We love our best friend and the lady who sits next to us in choir. Oh what is her name? We love our pastor and our choir director, and we love the little gal who gets our Starbucks order right every time. We love our kids and grandkids, and we love that childhood friend we haven’t seen in fifty years. We love our high school sweetheart and now we love our spouse. But what it all comes down to is this:
We are in love with love!
Discussion
List some popular songs or movies about love. Compare or contrast the theme of these songs and movies with the biblical definitions of love discussed in this chapter.
One Another Living 