Love As A Passion To Be Pursued
Today, as we celebrate Valentine’s Day, our thoughts and feelings turn to love and to those whom we love. But do we really understand what that simple, yet powerful word, LOVE, means?
Personally, this is a tough word for me to reflect on since my natural inclination is toward the intellectual pursuits rather than understanding my emotions. Yes, as a counselor I deal with the emotions of my clients, but note what I wrote: “my” emotions. I have no issue in helping others to come to an understanding of their own emotions and how they affect their lives. But my emotions, well, that’s a whole different story.
So, what is love? This is what the Christian bible states about love:
1If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing.4Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, 5does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, 6does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth;7bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.8Love never fails; but if there are gifts of prophecy, they will be done away; if there are tongues, they will cease; if there is knowledge, it will be done away.9For we know in part and we prophesy in part; 10but when the perfect comes, the partial will be done away. 11When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things. 12For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known. 13But now faith, hope, love, abide these three; but the greatest of these is love.
In my reflections and meditations on love, I continually return to the notion that love is an action. Even though love is an emotion, it is an emotion which demands an action. Many of our emotions can be kept to ourselves to experience, but love is an emotion that demands we share.
{loadposition blogsocial}