I feel like I might owe some people an explanation. Going to a school full of people who love Jesus and hugs and everyone else, I feel I might not be completely understood, and I want to make myself clear. I don’t throw around “I love you” the way that it seems it is common around here, and it is partly because I am awkward, but it is also because I see a huge weight on the word “love”.
A very wise friend of mine in a small group earlier this year said that she wanted to stop saying “I love you” as much because she wasn't following through with what God says that love is. How could it be bad to love people when the word of God says to? 1 John 4:7-8 says, “Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.” So why would she be concerned about telling people she loved them?
“Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.” 1 Corinthians 13:13
Love is an action, not a phrase. According to this verse, love is….
Patient, Kind, Content, Humble, Selfless, Pleasant, Peaceful, Rejoices in the Truth,
Bears all things, Believes all things, Hopes all things, Endures all things, and Never
Ends.
I never want to be in a place where I express love with my mouth and don’t show it with my actions. The word holds so much weight to me. So…. maybe you are one of the people I love but don’t always express it the same way that you do, know that I do love you, with the same love that Jesus loves me, I just don’t want to put anything on the line by throwing around a word that holds so much weight to me in my spirit. I am so thankful for so many people, at home in Tuscaloosa, in Birmingham at Highlands College, and many places in between, and I do honestly love you, I would just rather show it than say it for the sake of being true to my word. For every time my awesome friends say “the phrase” and I get awkward and throw you a peace sign or something weird, or every hug I deflect because I don’t know how to respond, just know that it is me protecting my word, and protecting the definition of love given by the only person who can actually love perfectly. We have been given the greatest example of love, and thankfully I have been blessed enough to find it- I know my brokenness, and I know that I am incredibly imperfect, therefore; I want to do my best to preserve the greatest things we have been given, love.
“And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.”
1 Corinthians 13:13
