So I was thinking about love and there is so much abuse of the word and everything related to it... You see so many people abuse others in the name of love or abuse love out of ignorance of the meaning of the word.
In the dictionaries I have looked at it is described as a warm affection for another person. Now let's make sure we get this right so affection means...? This is what google told me:
- A gentle feeling of fondness or liking.
- Physical expressions of these feelings.
So if having affection/love for someone means we are fond of them and we express this with physical expression all we have to do is like someone and show them that? Yeah no I don't think it's that simple, I mean it's love right? Well there are a few things that the bible tells us about love in 1 Corinthians 13:4-8
1. Love is patient
2. Love is kind
3. Love does not envy
4. Love does not boast
5. Love is not proud
6. Love is not rude
7. Love is not self seeking
8. Love is not easily angered
9. Love keeps no record of wrong
10.Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.
11. Love always protects.
12. Love always trusts.
13. Love always hopes.
14. Love always perseveres.
15. Love never fails.
Is this what comes to your mind when you think about love. I don't think so.... I know I don't, I think about the feelings I get when I'm with a person. Now this is where most people tend to abuse love, see if you think about love as the mushy feelings you get then you will treat love as a feeling when it isn't it is an action as well. Then when you feel lonely or sad or neglected you will feel unloved but that isn't the problem is it? There are reasons we are sad/lonely/neglected and sometimes they have to do with love but sometimes they are to do with something else and we blame others for feeling unloved when we really know deep down that it is something different that has got us thinking this way but it probably hurts too much to think about and it's so much easier to just blame others.
Well I have an example for this there's a girl and she comes from a broken home and she has friends she loves to bits but when she sees them she almost ends up hanging off them due to a lack of affection from her mother and though her friends do love her back they find themselves feeling pressured to give her their love which they won't do and they end up pulling away instead of being open about how they feel and the cycle spins she tries to force them to show their love instead of allowing them to give it freely.
If you realise that love is not a feeling but an action then you can say "hey I love you and when you need me I will always be there and it doesn't matter what you say to me I will never give up on you" it is not when you say " if you love me you will always make time for me" or "I love you so I need you to give me a hug and tell me it'll be okay" this is not love, true love is patient and it is not self seeking. Then there is real abuse when a person will hurt another person and claim that they love them, this is not love. "Love is kind" and "not easily angered" and so if a person is claiming to love you but will not treat you with real love then you should really think about your definition of love.