We use the word love so frivolously these days. I love this, I love that, I love it!, I really, really love it! I love it so much. Because of its overuse, the word has lost its true meaning. We say we love something when we mean, I like it or I want it or, simply, I enjoy it.
Whatever “it” is, we really don’t love it. Love is special. It is something that should only be used to describe your feelings for another living being. Whether it is a person or even a pet, love is an emotion that calls to another being.
You can’t really love a book. You can’t really love your fancy new blender. You certainly can’t love your (fill-in-the-blank) new diet. You like them, appreciate them, or whatever but you do not love them. Until those items or ways of life are capable of loving you back, then love is the wrong word to describe the depth of your feelings for them.
I don’t know when we started to shift the meaning of the word. I know that I have be guilty of using love in a way that is incorrect. Certainly, I have said I love a book or an author. In recent years, I’ve made a conscious effort to pull myself back from the improper use of the word.
While I have been struggling to correct my thoughts and words, I have seen that the world, as a whole, is spiraling deeper and deeper into making the word love essentially meaningless. In conversation with each other, it has been bad enough; however, it’s misuse in social media has made the loss of meaning exponential. I love it with emjois of hearts or smiling faces blowing hearts can be seen everywhere in posts and, especially, in comments.
It is sad that this is happening but it is not completely unexpected. The ruler of this world, for a time, is Satan. He wants us to try to find love in the wrong places. He doesn’t want us to look deeper. He wants love to mean nothing.
I shake my head in wonder but am thankful that I am trying to change my ways. There is a reason that I try to save this special word for special times for special people.
You see, love is not something that any being other than humans feel at such a deep level. Pets can care for you but certainly not at the level that you care for them back. Why do we humans have this special capacity?
It is really simple, you see, we were created in love. The first thing that we knew was the love of our Creator and our love for him back.
We were created to love God and to love one another. Our sinful nature has stepped in and destroyed our capacity to really feel love at the deepest level.
We still struggle to find true love. We look here and there. We may try to find it in people. We may try to find it in things. Where ever we look, if it isn’t towards God, we will never find deep and abiding love. We will search and search but we are doomed, ultimately, to search forever.
The way that people are using love and the things that they worship are like the idols of old. They are false gods, celebrities, or idols we have made with our own hands. In any of these situations, we are putting our love, hope and trust in something that will certainly fail us.
There is only one source of true love in this entire universe. The Creator who made us still loves us. He loves so deeply and so truly that he sent his own Son to die for us to save us from the deserved punishment for our sins.
Jesus is the son of God. He willingly came to this earth to live and die out of love for all people. Not just some. Not just the ones who go to church or do good deeds. He came for the sinner. That means he came for me. That means he also came for you.
It is after I met Jesus that I started to learn about true love. I will admit that even after I acknowledged him as my savior, I continued to think of love for others in the wrong ways.
It’s been a slow learning process and will be one that I will work on until the day that I die and meet Jesus face to face for the first time. It is on that day that I will finally understand true love. I will see it in his face and in the scars that he still carries to this day.
If you have not yet met Jesus, he is there waiting for you. His love will be that true love you have spent your life looking for. He loves you just as you are. You don’t have to be perfect or good for him to love you. You don’t have to do good works to be able to call on him to save you.
All you have to do is open your heart and receive his love, his salvation and his redemption of your life. Once you have accepted him and received his forgiveness, ask for his help so you can start living your life as he would have you do.
The next time you use the word “love” be sure you are using it properly so it doesn’t completely lose its meaning in your life.
1 John 4:7-10
Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.
This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.