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This is easy: LOVE.
In my mind, love out in the wide world is either too easy or entirely too complicated.
It's too easy in that you can throw the word around and it can be so cheap. You use the same word for "I love you" as you do for "I love lamp". One can mean everything while the other is nonsense. (Albeit hilarious nonsense, but you'll have to watch Anchorman for yourself one day and decide.) It lets the other person do whatever they want, as long as they say those three magic words and make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Love is a cute little flying cupid, blindly striking people with its arrows. TOO EASY.
Sometimes it can get way too complicated because we're going around looking for "the one" to "complete us" which is just wayyyyy too much pressure for one person! Also, sex complicates things and people run around doing it whenever they feel the urge (which is a lot, you'll discover as you grow!) Broken hearts, broken lives, broken marriages, broken homes. TOO COMPLICATED.
The world's view of love is a popular notion that bears little resemblance to my view.
In my worldview, love is a verb.
It has hands and feet and it serves.
It sacrifices itself for the object of its affection.
Love has TEETH.
It is tenacious and it never lets go. And not in a Titanic, Jack-and-Rose way. (There was totally room for two people on that floating piece of wood! But I digress.)
The word for this kind of love in Hebrew is hesed or chesed. It is a covenant love that never goes back on its end of the bargain, no matter what happens on the other side.
This is the kind of love that God has for us.
It is the kind of love that has saved us.
It is the kind of love that we spend our lives practicing and still will never get right.
But it is the kind of love that we must have or forever subscribe to something lesser.
And in the words that we so blithely recite at weddings from 1 Corinthians 13:
"Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Sometimes it can get way too complicated because we're going around looking for "the one" to "complete us" which is just wayyyyy too much pressure for one person! Also, sex complicates things and people run around doing it whenever they feel the urge (which is a lot, you'll discover as you grow!) Broken hearts, broken lives, broken marriages, broken homes. TOO COMPLICATED.
The world's view of love is a popular notion that bears little resemblance to my view.
In my worldview, love is a verb.
It has hands and feet and it serves.
It sacrifices itself for the object of its affection.
Love has TEETH.
It is tenacious and it never lets go. And not in a Titanic, Jack-and-Rose way. (There was totally room for two people on that floating piece of wood! But I digress.)
The word for this kind of love in Hebrew is hesed or chesed. It is a covenant love that never goes back on its end of the bargain, no matter what happens on the other side.
This is the kind of love that God has for us.
It is the kind of love that has saved us.
It is the kind of love that we spend our lives practicing and still will never get right.
But it is the kind of love that we must have or forever subscribe to something lesser.
And in the words that we so blithely recite at weddings from 1 Corinthians 13:
"Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never ends.
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