Love?

I often ponder the nature of love. Throughout the ages love has looked like so many different things that I have trouble distinguishing between what we mean by the word. But then I ask myself is it a feeling? If Christians are supposed to love the Lord God and their neighbor as themselves what does it mean if I don’t feel? How does it differ from romantic love? Does it differ? The following two quotes are the best definitions I have heard thus far.

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
-Shakespeare, Sonnet 116

Well maybe there's a God above
But all I've ever learned from love
Was how to shoot somebody who'd OUT DREW YA
And it's not a cry that you hear at night
It's not somebody who's seen in the light
It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah
-A Verse From Jeff Buckley, "Hallelujah"

Freedom has a scent
Like the top of a new born baby's head

The songs are in your eyes
I see them when you smile
I've seen enough I'm not giving up
On a miracle drug

Of science and the human heart
There is no limit
There is no failure here sweetheart
Just when you quit...

I am you and you are mine
Love makes no sense of space
And time...will disappear
Love and logic keep us clear
Reason is on our side, love...

The songs are in your eyes
I see them when you smile
I've had enough of romantic love
I'd give it up, yeah, I'd give it up
For a miracle, a miracle drug, a miracle drug

God I need your help tonight

Beneath the noise
Below the din
I hear your voice
It's whispering
In science and in medicine
"I was a stranger
You took me in"
-U2, "Miracle Drug"

Love is not a jubilant feeling: It is not ecstasy. The romantic ecstasy of being in the arms of another is just that – ecstasy. However, if love were limited to such things I, nor no man, has ever loved. Ecstasy, while milk and honey to two young lovers, cannot hold the bond of love. Love is bearing to the edge of doom. It is carrying the weight of another’s burden so they do not have to. It is realizing that if your legs were taken from you love would be a crutch to stand on. Love is not triumphant: it is not romantic. Love is a raw unadulterated commitment to another’s well being even at the cost of your dignity, comfort, or dreams. Love is finding solace in the mire for you are not alone. Indeed, love costs something. It is a breeze that carries up the soul to contentment in the midst of the blazing heat of pain. While we long for love to sound like Shakespeare melting from the lips of a kiss, we must realize that it is actually the tears shed for a life lived in selfishness and the hope of redemption. True love is the conviction that if all were lost for the sake of another, the bliss of holy joy would satisfy. Someone once told me that love is prevalence. Romantic ecstasy longs to bring two people together: love keeps them there. Love endures: If this be error and upon me proved I never writ nor no man ever loved.