Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Love. Love is a word that gets tossed frequently in our modern world. We love our children. We love our spouses. We love our parents. We love chocolate. We love “that movie.” We love it when X happens. We love the way things look, smell, taste, sound, ad infinitum. It is used in so many situations and contexts that it quickly loses its power and its real meaning. To hear us talk, you would think that there is nothing in this world that we do NOT love.
We understand, at least intellectually speaking, that love is not an emotion. It is certainly surrounded by and imbued with a great deal of emotion, but in the end it is a choice. We choose to love the ones who are around us. Even though the world is trying to convince us that love literally “pops up out of nowhere,” we know deep down inside that it is ultimately something that we decide to either do or not do. It is beautiful, and it is difficult.
We have been charged by our God and by his Son Jesus Christ to love one another. We have been charged as well to love those who are in our lives that we might otherwise choose to avoid and ignore. We are challenged by the love that God has poured into our lives to express His love to everyone we come into contact with. We know that it is only by loving one another that the world will know that we belong to Christ. Furthermore, we know that it is only in real acts of love that people will see Christ in us.
–Ricky