THE WAY OF LOVE

Love has become so romanticized in a world that has lost the true meaning of love. Image credit: *MUHAMMADH SAMY* on Unsplash.

By REVEREND TONY ZEKVELD

With Valentine’s Day around the corner, we see all the red hearts, chocolates, and the commercialization of love to get you into the mood.

Not much is known about Valentine. He was a bishop or priest in the third century. There are many legends and fanciful stories that began to be popularized about him. According to one source, Valentine’s Day only became associated with love in the late Middle Ages (fourteenth century), thanks to the English poet Geoffrey Chaucer (www.history.com).

But it sells. That’s the main thing about Valentine’s Day today. And that gets me to thinking about the way of love. It has become so romanticized in a world that has lost the true meaning of love. It’s shallow; often based on feelings. I feel it today for that girl or boy, and it lasts as long as I feel it, and when the feeling goes, well, love is gone. I move on. It comes and goes.

Dating hurts. Marriages break. The ‘fluttering’ feeling goes and relationships are tangential. I recall a couple deciding to divorce because they didn’t feel love for one another. That’s the problem with feelings. It comes and goes and it’s often about how ‘I’ feel. But true love is a choice. It’s a commitment, and in a marriage, it is a commitment “til death do us part”.

I remember one professor making clear to our class that love is a command, and then the feelings follow. True love, love at its depth, is sacrificial. It’s sacrificing self for the other person. So in a marriage, the husband sacrifices himself for his wife and his wife sacrifices herself for her husband in love and obedience to the Lord.

As one author puts it, “Marriages are dying because marriage is about dying”. It’s about dying to self for the sake of the other. That’s the way of love.

God showed His love for the world in that He gave His only begotten Son, Jesus. He gave Him as the sacrifice for the sins of all who believe in Him. His commitment is forever. He will never drop them. When His love is in us, then we can begin to walk in the way of His love. It’s meaningful. It lasts. It’s deep. By believing in Christ, we have His strength to love self-sacrificially.

HOPE TRIUMPHS

THE WAY OF LOVE