All you need is love, doo doo doo dooo

For about a year now I've been reflecting on and off on the nature of love. Being in loving relationships myself, it is pretty important; in fact very important. It's a struggle for me in some regards, to be faithful to those I care about. It's Jesus greatest commandment, and yet I feel we don't focus on it as much as other 'rules' of the Christian life. This is unbeleivable really, when you stop to think, and when you notice the love shared and given by some non-Christians. So a lot of my research has had to be private, outside of teaching my churches have offered, instead through questionnning Christian friends and reading the odd book.

This morning I came across an article on the internet, which I liked becuase it doesn't try to offer a quick answer but is more broad. I also like it as it's written by someone from a people-group in China that I have a passion for. (I'd love to see many Christian workers amongst them, and have excitment that many churches might and are being planted amoung them. They're a people I've been close to geographically - just seperated by the Tian Shan mountain range; I am thinking about praying for this region regularly.) Here's the article: http://www.rfa.org/english/uyghur/2006/05/23/uyghur_yasin/

The author, wisely I think, encourages each person to find their own defination. This nis different to most of what you read! So I took his advice and here are my conclusions, which I'm sure (and hope) will be improved on over the years, short-term and long-term:

1 Corinthians 13 has the only definition we can really go by with wholehearted endorsement I think - love is patient, kind, keeps no record of wrongs. It is expressed in actions and chosen atttitudes, not simply feelings.

It can be easily understood, or it can be pretty much inexplicable. i.e. Sometimes you can predict the kind of person you could love very easily; as my friend Beth once said to me, it's about 'preferences'. After a year of thinking about this, I think she's right; it is 'easy' to love certain people over others; some fit our 'bill' of 'sexy' or 'loveable' or 'sweet'. This especially works when it comes to both feelings and actions: perfect! But other times you can end up loving a person you wouldn't think you would, and being amazed that their differences to you are somewhat interesting and compelling. And that is allowed too! Some people end up married to those they would have predicted; others' choices are off the wall, and it might require a bit more effort to understand each other, but work well.

I have also concluded that love is more about what is in you/the person doing the loving: the love capability that is there, than about the recipient/the beloved/you. (their/our behaviour or 'deservedness'). Occasionally we don't get any feedback from someone we choose to love (I'm thinking of a Chinese lady living in England who i loved out of choice for a long time - playing badminton every week, visiting, with little love given back), but it completes and fulfills us to love anyway, and we can do it through the Spirit of God living in us if we follow Jesus (and now i am lucky that this friend emails me sometimes and has helped me in the past.)

I hate to say it, as being part of my generation I feel shy of committment: but the Bible talks about making committment, and God is a God of covenants all through his relationship with people... from Abraham to Hagar .... So somewhere in there is that. Always being there. About it being a foundation below and above the behaviour of the other person, an attitude that loves anyway.

I'd love to hear what others think of you have anything constructive to share. You can leave a comment.

I've also recently come a sitauion where a couple was dropped by a working-team as the relationship wasn't fulfilling original expectations. The teaching underlying this is that if love/friendship/working-relationship isn't working, or produces a bad reaction in you, then we should move on. Jesus also teaches his missionaries to shake the dust off their shoes in places where they're not welcome. Does this also mean where people are not interested in finding out more about God? I struggle with both of these things, although I do think each case should be examined on it's own and different conclusions can result. What do you think? is this reasonable?