Faith: Love, What is Love?

Shakespeare said “To Love is to err”.

“The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved, loved for ourselves or rather, loved in spite of ourselves” (Victor Hugo)

To be in love and to be loved is great but being in love and loving someone can be a risk.  Maybe the greatest risk we can ever take because although love can be a powerful thing, love can also be dangerous.  There is the risk of rejection, the risk our hearts will be torn in two, risk of being misunderstood and the risk of losing that love.  I am sure there are other risks but I cannot think of more at the moment.

I have loved and I have lost in the romantic sense, but I am still glad that I got the chance to love the person I loved. 

I have loved friends and then lost that friendship due to various reasons, but am still glad I got the chance to be their friends because I learnt things about myself in the friendships.  However, for the friendships I have lost, I have also gained friends whom I do love still.  I have friends across the world whom I do not see but I still love and will always love them.  I have friends in the same town whom I see quite regularly and I love them for being in my life, for sticking by me and for the things they have taught me.

I love my family. We may not always get on, but I love them. 

Loving others can be good, but loving others does involve risk. There is only one love in which there is no risk, and that is loving God. There is no risk to loving God because he took all the risk upon himself by dying on the cross for us.

We are called by God to love others that does not just mean loving those who love you, it also means loving our enemies as well.  As it says in Matthew 5 v 44 “But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you”.

Loving people can be hard. But we are commanded to love others, but it does involve pain, it can involve rejection, it involves hurt, it can involve broken trust and it does involve death.  The more we love someone, the more pain we feel when something bad happens and the more we love someone the more pain we feel when our loved one dies. 

How do we deal with the pain that love can cause? Well we need to take it to God and ask him to help us deal with what we are going through individually and help the other person involved as well.

It is a fact that we are called to love others, so even if you really do not like your friend / husband / wife / mum / dad / sister etc you must still love them, as we are commanded to love not like, we are commanded to love as God loves us.

But love doesn't always need to involve risk, pain, hurt etc. Love also involves joy, happiness, laughter, smiles and much more.  We need to hold onto the happy memories and treasure these memories as these can get us by during the bad times.