True Love

What is love? True Love?


I was watching (500) Days of Summer tonight and that was the question. The main character Tom, wanted it so badly. Though he had never experienced it, never tasted it, he only saw it in the movies. Summer, the other main character, however was so afraid of love. All she knew was the traumatic aftermath of love given-up. She had a wall built up, she never wanted something that could end like that. 


So why am I telling you this? For a long time I have wondered this: How can a person long for a feeling so much, but has never experienced it. Then God metaphorically slapped me in the face (in reality He tapped me on the shoulder and cleared his throat, okay well that to was my imagination) and was like duh. I made you to be loved, by me, and for you to love me back if it's your will. He also made man and woman. Companions in this short journey we call life; to be there for each other, to love each other, to keep each other accountable. And yet again love is used, but what is love? I think the classic/corny that describes it is 1 Corinthians 13. Leave it to God to be beast at describing love (well, He did create it).

1 Corinthians 13

 ¹ If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. ²If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. ³ If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast,but do not have love, I gain nothing.
 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. ⁷ It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
 ⁸ Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. ⁹ For we know in part and we prophesy in part, ¹⁰ but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. ¹¹ When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. ¹² For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
 ¹³ And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

"We can give without loving, but we cannot love without giving"

  -- Alexander Duff