And The Greatest of These....

A friend of mine posted on her blog, on the subject of what true love is. She said,

In English class today, my professor asked us to list ten words we associate with our first kiss.

I raised my hand bashfully. "What if you've never been kissed?"

A few people chuckled in the back of the class.

"Uh..." My professor sat with a look of consternation on her face. "Then... list ten words describing what you think your first kiss will be like."

I was stumped. A "romantic" relationship with the opposite sex is something I've always avoided... and ignored.... And yes, I do enjoy a romantic movie now and then. (My personal favourites are when the male party dies a sudden, tragic death and the female party lives the rest of her life in celibate sainthood... wait... have I ever seen a movie with that plot? No. Guess not. However, those are the stories I make up.) But then I step back and have to laugh at the "rose-coloured glasses" the world looks through at "love." According to the world, love is really nothing more than a hormonal imbalance... or indigestion.

I like the way 1 Corinthians 13 describes love...

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails... And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. (verses 4-8a, 13)

The dictionary's definition of "love" is "a deep, tender, ineffable feeling of affection and solicitude toward a person, such as that arising from kinship, recognition of attractive qualities, or a sense of underlying oneness. A feeling of intense desire and attraction toward a person with whom one is disposed to make a pair; the emotion of sex and romance."
If you notice, that definition is fraught with words which indicate that love is a "feeling" or a "desire." But love does not originate from a feeling. If it did, then it would be reasonable for a mother to disown her child the first moment he displeases her. Yet any loving mother would never think of such a thing. Why? Because true love for another is not rooted on emotions. If it were, it would be frail indeed.

I think that is what Shakespeare was trying to express the essence of true love when he wrote the following sonnet:

Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O, no! It is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken,
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unkown, although his hieght be taken
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But it bears out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error, and upon me prov'd,
I never writ, nor no man ever lov'd.

--William Shakespeare, Sonnet CXVI

Jesus said, "Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends." (John 15:13) The love that He speaks of here is not, and cannot, be defined by any dictionary.

posted by Hannah