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What does this four letter word mean to you? What is love? Love means many things to many people and the word is often used loosely to describe their affection, likes, affinity, friendship, kindness, consideration, attachment, kinship, passion, desire, fondness, predilection, adoration and other things. When the ancient Greeks spoke of love they had several different words to choose from but the English language has but the one and we have to discern the meaning of it when used. Why is it that we love things anyway? What is it about people that makes us love them? Objects can be loved but all that means is they give us pleasure in some way. With people though that rule doesn’t apply, we can love people without them having to love us in return. Yes, inanimate objects cannot love us in return either but then they are not capable of doing so whereas people are. With people however we can mean different things when we say we love them, it could be a sexual love, a brotherly or sisterly love, the love of a father or mother or for them. It could be a compassionate love or a spiritual love. Loving someone is not the same as liking them either. I like many people but I don’t love them in a personal way. I love people but I don’t like them all. There is the love of man and there is the love of God. One sometimes comes with conditions but the other hasn’t any.  Disliking people usually means that we don’t like what they do rather than who they are as a person or it may mean we don’t like their attitudes and the way they live their lives but we can still love them. How about this love: ‘For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son, that whosoever believes in him shall not perish but have everlasting (eternal) life’. (John 3:16) Could you love the world in this way? Could you make such a sacrifice for all mankind? Of course you couldn’t because it isn’t in you to do that, it isn’t in any of us. Our form of love is sadly lacking in sincerity sometimes and it comes with preconditions when it really shouldn’t. This is what real love is like: ⁴ Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. ⁵ It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. ⁶ Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. ⁷It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. (1 Corinthians 13 but read the whole chapter). As you can see our love lacks in these things quite often. How often has a loved one hurt us and we have felt wronged, had thought nasty thoughts? This world is sadly lacking real love and until we can learn to love properly the world will never change.

Shirley Anne

⁸ Love never fails.

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