The Love Thing
By Sarah Bowling
Love can be tricky maybe because we use this word for lots of stuff such as: chocolate, books, music, movies, games, nature, sports teams, hobbies and heaps more. Additionally, there’s a good chance that you’ve been “in love”, which we often associate love with romance. Such experiences can easily grow into the misconception that love is primarily defined in romantic relationships with flowers, dates, sex, etc as the end-all, be-all for love. If this is our concept of love, it can get messy and go rogue when we experience the heartbreak that can come from the romance fading or when we go through a “break up”.
So what is love? In a simple description, we often use the word “love” to express intense desire or pleasure for experiences or memories. At the same time, this is the word that is used by philosophers and religions, often causing us to respond with reflection and awe. For example:
o “I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.” Martin Luther King Jr
o “Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.” Lao Tzu
o “To love is to be vulnerable.” CS Lewis
o “Love cures people – both the ones who give it and the ones who receive it.” Karl Menninger
o “Where there is love, there is life.” Mahatma Gandhi
o “Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: the salvation of man is through love and in love.” Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning
Quotes like the examples I just listed cause me to pause and sometimes they resonate deeply in my soul. At the same time, there’s no shortage of thoughts and quotes about love and I think that’s important to consider because love is a timeless subject and it spans ages, seasons, experiences, continents, disciplines, religions, philosophies and much more.
As for my thoughts on love, I believe it’s important to consider some things aren’t genuine love. Like loving chocolate, or loving NCAA basketball, loving to learn or loving Thai food – I don’t think these “loves” are wholly genuine love. These things are pleasurable and we can definitely enjoy them, but let’s save the word, “love” for something more than pleasure.
Let’s also consider that genuine love isn’t merely a transactional experience: I love you and you do something or I do something and you love me. This feels like a commercial exchange, similar to swiping my credit card or getting something from Amazon. If that’s genuine love, then it is very limited and conditional. Such merit-based love is both thin and fragile, unsustainable in our messy human existence.
To find ourselves in love, not merely the romantic or Valentines Day festivities, but sincerely find ourselves, then let’s unzip our hearts so that genuine love can tiptoe with us into wholeness. Let’s allow genuine love to sculpt and be the fundamental defining ingredient for
our identity. To truly know ourselves, we must let genuine love define us, being wholly available to be loved. For me, this doesn’t happen primarily in my human relationships but rather in a steady interface with God, whom I believe to be Genuine Love.
Whether or not we want to love, sometimes a mercurial decision depending on circumstances, experiences, hormones, let’s be available for God to love us.
Whether it is helping babies and toddlers around the world with Saving Moses, traveling for a guest speaking opportunity, or in one of her many books, you always get the same love filled Sarah. She has a gift for communicating deep truths and difficulties while staying kind and casual, and we are grateful to have her be apart of this collaboration! To see Sarah’s website and blog click the link below!
