Love probably is the most overly used, defined and desensitized word. It has been used as an excuse of ones own failure, defined to fits ones own advantage and desensitized to mean nothing but human exchanges of saliva.
For a Christian, love is not just a noun it’s a verb that requires action. It is a noun because it is God Himself, “God is love.” 1 John 4:8. It is also a verb because it compels us to concretize it our lives and the lives of others. It is not just used as an excuse of our failure to love like Him. We say, “I am falling out of love, so I will break up with her.” It’s as if love is just a matter of falling, a word bound by gravity. But love, if real, defies the force of gravity. We find so many excuses because from the beginning we already have a different motive in leading someone to us. If our love is real, our motive has to be pure as possible. We are courting someone because we see in her a spark of the divine.
Love has been defined in such a way that it fits our own selfish desires. We relegated love in the realms of feelings and emotions and nothing more. So much that it means nothing when hardships come. Our love is the love of I, me and myself. If we don’t like the other anymore, if she is of no use anymore, if we don’t have the feelings anymore, we throw her out. But love, is not just a part of something, it is everything. When we love, we love the entire person not just the beautiful part of her but including the not so good of her. We cannot just say, “I love you because you have such a beautiful eye.” What if she gets blind? Love is wholesale not retail. Hindi patingi-tingi ang pag-ibig! Kung iibig ka, buo! You take her as a whole or not at all.
Our definition of love is a Hollywood definition. When somebody kisses someone, that’s it, it seals everything. We desensitized love! As if love is just a matter of exchanging saliva. If that’s the case, then we are no different from other lower animals that just do their thing anywhere. But we are human beings, we are not just bodies, we have the spirit in us. We are the temple of the Holy Spirit according to 1 Corinthians 6:19. The body of a human being is no ordinary thing, it is not for sale, nor it is just for the consumption of our lustful desires. Sex will achieve its full meaning if done within the bounds of marriage. In this way, the human body is respected and treated not just an object but instead a way for expressing externally the pure motive of love.
It is no wonder why it is so easy to court someone on Facebook, express the feelings on twitter, and tell the world about all the emotions through other social media, because somehow the virtual reality provides a shield for someone from a real responsibility. We want love but we don’t want responsibility. We despise having accountability with our actions. We just want the “kiligs”, the giggles of loving. Love can never be virtual it has to be real! And certainly, we can never have love without responsibility. So we show ourselves with all courage and win the other over, by being real to her in her own home and family. We face the people who love her and tell them our real intentions.
To love of course is the most beautiful thing in the world. It provides us a glimpse of heaven. It points us to the reality of God Himself. No wonder why we desire and long for it. Blessed Pope John Paul 2 had beautifully expressed where all this desires comes from and to whom it actually points. He said, “It is Jesus that you seek when you dream of happiness; He is waiting for you when nothing else you find satisfies you; He is the beauty to which you are so attracted; it is He who provoked you with that thirst for fullness that will not let you settle for compromise; it is He who urges you to shed the masks of a false life; it is He who reads in your heart your most genuine choices, the choices that others try to stifle.”
“It is Jesus who stirs in you the desire to do something great with your lives, the will to follow an ideal, the refusal to allow yourselves to be ground down by mediocrity, the courage to commit yourselves humbly and patiently to improving yourselves and society, making the world more human and more fraternal.”
So until we reaches to a level of maturity, were we look at love with the eyes of Christ, we wait. It is in waiting that we are molded, tested and fully formed into His image, so we can love the way He does. Waiting is not depriving us of the joys and exhilaration of love it is in fact saving us from the unnecessary hurts and pains that the counterfeit offers. If our love is real, we certainly don’t mind waiting.
by aats
(http://ginagmayngbutang.blogspot.ca/2012/01/real-love-waits.html)
