“Love” is a word very dependent on context for meaning. For instance, I have said the following phrases before:
“I love pizza.”
“I love my wife.”
Now hopefully I don’t love pizza and my wife in the exact same way. There should be an inequality in my love for those two things.
But in a way, I loved my wife much like I love pizza when we were first married. She was young, beautiful and fun to be with. And she liked me, which made me feel good about myself.
In other words, I liked how she made me feel.
I recall our first official argument. We were engaged to be married. I don’t remember all the details just that it was heated. Afterwards, I drove to a friends house, sat on his couch and wept. Why was I crying? Because I was convinced the engagement was off. Nothing had really changed.
But it felt like it.
What happens when your favorite brand of pizza changes their sauce recipe and it no longer tickles your tastebuds? You stop buying it, right? You find a different brand. And that’s okay when it comes to pizza. But in human relationships it’s just downright selfish.
I’m not saying you should never cut off a relationship, just that it isn’t healthy as a practice. And it can easily become a practice because in every relationship there are times when the sauce recipe gets changed and one or both people are no longer in “love”. But the thing you want to happen when the sauce recipe gets changed is for the love to grow, to change into something grander and more majestic, a sort of Love Phoenix.
You’re familiar with the mythical bird that rises from the ashes, right?
What’s crazy is that if you are willing to stick at it even when the sauces change you discover a stronger, deeper love. A love that simultaneously transcends and deepens your feelings.
A final and most important thought:
There is a strange phrase in 1 John 4:8. It says “God is love.” Think about that. It doesn’t say God has love or God gives love or even God made love. It says God is love.
Do you want to know the deepest, most wonderful, out-of-this-world love there is? Examine God’s character.
God is love.
