Feel the Love

I do think that flowers show love, though ;)

I often have to apologize to my husband for not being a typical, touchy-feely romantic girl.  To me, love is not holding hands and kissing in the middle of the kitchen while dinner burns.  Love is holding hands and kissing when all the dishes are done.  But no one makes movies about that. 

I know there have been eloquent books written on how different people communicate and receive love differently.  My favorite example of this, though, comes from a song in the musical Fiddler on the Roof.  Teyva's wife Golde apparently has the same "love language" that I do.  Here are a couple of the verses:

(Tevye)
"I know..."
But do you love me?
(Golde)
Do I love you?
For twenty-five years I've washed your clothes
Cooked your meals, cleaned your house
Given you children, milked the cow
After twenty-five years, why talk about love right now?
 (Tevye)
"I know..."
But do you love me?
(Golde)
Do I love him?
For twenty-five years I've lived with him
Fought him, starved with him
Twenty-five years my bed is his
If that's not love, what is?

I don't want to say that feelings have no place in love; obviously, they do.  Human emotion is a powerful and beautiful thing, and love is perhaps the strongest of human emotions. 

And yet real love is not primarily emotion.  Or perhaps it would be better to say love is not solely emotion.  Love is action.  If you were asked to prove how you know someone loves you, chances are you would begin to list things they do.

That's how God proved that He loves us, and how He explains what it means to love.  I John 3:16a says "We know love by this, that He laid down His life for us;"

It doesn't stop there, though.  In I John 3, God keeps explaining what it means to love.
..."and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. But whoever has the world’s goods, and sees his brother in need and closes his heart against him, how does the love of God abide in him? Little children, let us not love with word or with tongue, but in deed and truth." 

God showed what love is when He sent Jesus to die in our place.  But He also gives us an incredible opportunity to show what love is.  If you have been saved, God's love abides in you.  And I John is clear that God's love abiding in us isn't just a touchy-feely love.  It isn't even a love of words.  It is a love of action. And we have a responsibility to live out that love.

One of the ways I know right now that God loves me is because of all the beautiful love I am receiving from God's people.  People who carve out time in their day to write me, call me, text me, visit me, allow me to visit them, bring me coffee or lunch.  People who send meals or restaurant gift cards.  People who mow our lawn.  People who sit with me, cry with me, and pray over me.  People who think of sweet, practical ways to serve me and provide for my physical and emotional needs and then act.

 I feel like I have been allowed to feel God's love a little more during the last several weeks than I have at other times in my life.  And one way I have seen and understood God's love is through His people.  Their love gives me a glimpse of how incredible His love is.  

"Showing God's love" is such an over-used Christian catch-phrase that we may not consider the gravity of what He allows and requires us to do.  If you have been saved, His love literally lives in you!  The way that we treat others may provide for them the most concrete understanding of how God loves them.  How's that for challenging?  So many people in my life have risen to this challenge, and I am so grateful for their love, or rather, for God's love coursing through them and to me.

 ^"Now as to the love of the brethren, you have no need for anyone to write to you, for you yourselves are taught by God to love one another; for indeed you do practice it toward all the brethren who are in all Macedonia. But we urge you, brethren, to excel still more."
 ~I Thess. 4:9-10 NASB