I love my family. I love my home. I love my church. I love Jonathan Thulin’s Science Fiction album. I love my SIlhouette Cameo. But there’s a funny thing about love that’s based on emotion…it changes. I will always love my family, but there are extended family members that I don’t show love to because of relationship circumstances. One day, I could decide I need a bigger, better home or a different church family. And my current music love or product love, could change when something new and different is released.
But I also know, that there is hope for love beyond our emotions. Love in Action! It’s easy to treat love as a noun, but things get a little more dicey when it comes down to treating love as a verb. If we want to be content and happy in all things that God has blessed us with, we have to put love in action everyday, every hour, every minute and every second. I know that to keep my family together, we have to choose to love one another, even if we have a fight or disagree on something, or whether the kids have destroyed yet another piece of furniture or stained the carpet. I have to choose to love the home and church family God has placed me in, to remain content with where He has me right now. And it’s okay to love the “things” in my life, but I also have to choose to love God more and be okay, if those things are taken away.
1 Corinthians 13 is a well known chapter by most of us. It was included in our wedding ceremony, as well as in many weddings I’ve attended. “Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.”
Because we are created in God’s image, we share in His characteristics of love. I have to work on love everyday, but I am so glad that God’s love is unconditional, forever, never failing, enduring, all encompassing, forgiving, and for everyone.
This page is beautiful, Ashley. You have blessed me with your story behind it. God bless you!
Very beautiful.
Michelle rueter martelli