What’s Love Got to Do with It?

Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers a multitude of sins.

1 Peter 4:8

My husband and I dated in college. On our first Valentine’s Day together, he presented me with a handmade gift. Somehow, he had cut a large heart out of a corrugated box and outlined it with halved ping pong balls. 

While my man was clearly not an artist, he made up for it by painting I LOVE YOU across the heart in large block letters. I was thrilled. I kept that Valentine until it crumbled and fell apart. 

I think it’s important to express love, and Valentines are a good way to say, “I love you”. However, sometimes I wonder if we really understand what love is. 

Our world tends to define love as a romantic attraction or happy affection. I call that “easy love.” It blooms for awhile, but under stress it withers away. (Need I point out the high divorce rate and number of broken homes?) 

On the other hand, genuine love endures, even when loving someone is hard to do. I mean, it’s easy to love a sweet toddler whose face lights up when he sees us. Not so easy, however, to love a sullen teenager giving us the silent treatment across the dinner table. 

Admittedly, loving someone who rejects us or behaves badly is next to impossible. Yet God did it. He loved us while we were sinners and wanted nothing to do with him. Our world needs that kind of love.  

The very good news is this: God gives his love to believers, and the Spirit enables us to share God’s love with others. 

As his Word tells us, let us love one another, for love is from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God (1 John 4:7 ). 

Father, thank you for showing us what love is.

Carol