We love because he first loved us.
1 John 4:19, ESV
Love. There has been a lot of ink spilled on this topic. Whether it be in poetry, music, stage theater, or movies, we can find a lot of thoughts about this vital emotional bond that our hearts naturally seek, but do we really understand what it is? In Greek, there are three types defined as love – eros, friendship, and godly. Only one, I believe, expresses the true love that our heart aches after, and that is the love that God expresses. An unending and enduring love that seeks to draw us ever closer to Himself to the point that He would sacrifice His Son so that we could fully know it. It is a love that abides and carries us through all struggle, strife, and pain. It is the love that causes those who have a taste of it to give up everything else in order to maintain it and keep it forever. The other two things that our worldliness portrays as love are minute when compared to the love of God, yet without the love of God being present, we would never be able to experience any of it. The eros love that is meant to be had between husband and wife is known to its fullest extent for those whose lives are centered and dedicated first to a full relationship with God, and true friendship is also centered as such in God. When the world tries to remove God from the equation, we find that it is all a mere facsimile of the reality that God desires for us all to know and is less satisfying and enduring, but in the love of God, we find that all things are newly created and renewed. Without God, there is no love at all.
Let us pray. I thank you, my heavenly Father, through Jesus Christ, your dear Son, that you have kept me this night from all harm and danger, and I ask you to protect me this day also from sin and every evil, that in all I do today, I may please you. For into your hands, I commend myself, my body and soul, and all that is mine. Let your holy angel watch over me, that the wicked foe have no power over me. Amen.