Out of Focus on Love

You know, this is random but you’ll realize that soon . . .  the dictionary – and society – has a poor definition of love in my personal opinion.  It seems to me that both sources of “meaning” present a picture that more closely resembles lust than love. 

 

I mean, eyes meet across a crowded room – love at first sight?  Okay, sure you can approach and have a relationship and it can become love if you both choose to make it that, but the concept of love at first sight is flawed since two strangers are only attracted initially by curiosity and lust. 

 

Love is a noun, or as a noun, is something we can have.  We decide to have it.  We work to perfect it.  We give it.  We seek it.  If we are Christians, we are especially called to all these but while it might feel good and often it might not feel all that good, its work.  It’s a lot of work. 

 

 It makes us step outside of our “all about me” world and put “it” out there and take risk in doing so.  Life becomes entirely different and in my view rises to a higher level when we decide to love and put it, this love, into action. 

 

It is not, however, initially a feeling or a verb, at all.  It begins as a noun and it’s only what we decide that makes it more than that.  We don’t even have to decide in favor.  I know some who do not choose to live with love as a focus.  I pray for them. 

 

Do you love what you do?  Does it show?  Do you feel the benefits of having made the decision to love? 

 

Just random thoughts. . . you know, getting back to the gaze across a crowded room theory . . . we are quick to buy into the concept of “love at first sight” and get all hot and sweaty about a cute stranger . . . sometimes . . . but then other times, we pass judgment and show ourselves to be unwilling to accept anyone who’s “different” from us.

 

Where’s the “love” when we’re faced with political unrest?  Where it is when we are faced with folks who worship differently than we do?  Dress differently than we do?  Speak a different native tongue than our own? 

 

Jesus died for them, too.