When love goes missing, some say “good riddance” because any excuse to cast love into the darkness works for them. After all, violence and hatred rule the day, and nobody can fix that. Some say love is just too disappointing and never lives up to their expectations, so they are better off without it anyway. After all, love is superficial and silly, so why bother?
Still others search the Internet for love, taking in the voices of those with faulty definitions of love, turning it into a game that must be skillfully played if it’s ever going to work out. They prefer to squelch this thing called love and move on in desperate misery. Who needs it? Just lock up love and throw away the key.
When love grows cold and lifeless because it has been bullied and beaten and provoked by those who simply cannot understand it, everyone suffers. Everyone struggles. Everyone has heart trouble. It’s a malady that perpetuates itself and leaves the wounded in its wake. Love is suffering, but it is not dead. How do we know love lives on?
We know because each person with a broken heart still clings to it. Each human being with a genuine definition of God, still hopes for it. Anyone who longs for good to prevail, keeps its flame burning. Love isn’t looking for pretenders, or those who insist on their own way. It’s looking for openness, generosity, and the face of forgiveness. Love isn’t for the fainthearted, or those who have built walls to keep it from ever getting in. It peeks out at you in the face of a child or the soulful eyes of a puppy dog. It lifts you up and stands beside you when grief fills your heart and brings comfort. It bounces back despite the bad press it receives or the failure it experiences. Since love is an attribute of God, it is eternal and never ending. It will continue until forever from now and it only needs one thing. You!
Bring love home again and open the door for it to enter in with gusto. Toss out the naysayers and the chronic whiners and let love prevail. God sees you. He knows love is what you need and He will never let love fade into the darkness.
February may bring hearts and valentines, but love is for every day of the year!