Love, True Love

I have struggled with what I should write this month. I’ve been dealing with on e of the nastier bugs that has been making the rounds lately and I think I may h ave strained my brain a bit during one of my coughing fits. No matter how hard I try nothing is springing from that fountain of imagination that is usually so reliable.

My gray matter has gone black. The synaptic thunderstorm in my mind has become more of a gentle rain shower, nice for cozying up to the fire and pondering the simpler things of life, but not so great for writing an engaging and thought provoking article. 

So what to do? What to do? Listen to your wife, that’s what.
 
“It’s February,” she said, “Write about love. You know the sappy, soppy, slushy type of love that you men claim you don’t like.”
 
So I figured, why not? So here it goes. Some scattered thoughts on love.
 
Love has a screw loose. It is downright crazy, isn’t it?  It ought to be fitted for a straightjacket. It hits you like a ton of bricks, and it completely takes you over. You can’t sleep. You can’t think. You just sit there and moon.
 
I seem to recall a young man back in the seventies who would drive a 150 mile round trip each and every week in a 1964 Valiant with no air, no heat, no speedometer and not much of a roof just so he could be with his love. Sometimes he would make the trip twice just to see a ballet that she was in; and trust me when I say that is true love.
 
Love is nuts. True love is virtuous insanity, but it is insanity nonetheless.
 
When you find that certain someone, reason takes a hike and mental illness and emotional instability move right on in. Y’all stop me if I get off track. I mean what wouldn’t you do for the ones you love?
 
Just saying it, if it’s real, is never enough. It isn’t so much that the lover needs to see some tangible evidence, as much as it is that the lovey needs to display something tangible.
 
If you love somebody, I mean really love somebody, you want the world to know it and to see it. Am I right?
 
Love is a thousand yellow ribbons, it’s Marvin Gaye singing “Ain’t no mountain high enough.” Love is a single red rose resting in a crystal vase sitting on a sidewalk in mid-February. Love is never leaving, always caring and being true. That is what true love looks like isn’t it?
 
Love is kissing your daughter’s tears away and hiding yours when the time comes to give her away. Love is enduring a sixth grade orchestra concert, a third grade choir and the heartbreak of a losing season. Love holds through thick and thin, sick and well, young and old, good times and bad.
 
Love sleeps all night on a little girl’s floor just to make sure the monster is dead, and love gently brushes the hair of the woman who doesn’t know your name but forever remains a part of you.
 
Love is a mountain top where everything is possible, and love is a heartache so desolate that only God above can offer comfort.
 
Love is a gift. Love is a curse. Love is life with all of its glory and loss, all of its joy and sorrow. Love is the marrow, the essence, the substance of life. Love is life.
 
Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him.
1 John 4:16
 
 
 
Love,
Pastor Tony

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