How does one describe the word “love” to one who has not experienced it? I find it impossible to describe the “feeling” or “knowledge” to anyone else, even the person I love the most. It is an event and experience that is intensely personal, yet always relational.
During the past few days, story on story relates how husbands or wives, knowing that they were dying, called their best friend to let them know, one more time, that they loved them. The recordings express love, unfettered by a fight that hung on from yesterday and freed from the distractions of other priorities, from one individual to another. As one listens in on a conversation never intended for public hearing but without embarrassment or hesitation, one can easily sense the true passion, intensity, and depth of the relationship.
Solomon knew what he was talking about when he said, “A hearty wife invigorates her husband, but a frigid woman is cancer in the bones.” (Proverbs 12.4)
Love can bind, yet the absence of it tears. Love is nurturing, and the loss of it often destroys hope. Love cascades all other emotions, especially when people understand what is going to happen to each of us in this life. In several relationships – husband to wife and mother, young son to mother and sister, wife to husband, and on – we see and feel just what this means when one understands that death comes to each.
I realize anew that I have no real idea of how God views you and me. To hear those words, “I love you”, from the Divine creator of the universe causes me to pause. Why does he love us? How much does he love us? What did we do to deserve this expression?
God sense of loss when our relationship was broken was so intense that he gave up part of himself so that we can be restored and recreated into our full potential and relationship with him. The question are many, yet the most important thing in life come from Him to us; “I love you.”
