Condensation means “to be reduced to a simpler form”.
I was sitting in Church yesterday, listening to our Pastor speak passionately about God coming back to help us, over and over and over again. And the love He gives us isn’t just for us. It’s for us to give away, to help the next person up. God’s love is a gift we are given with the specific purpose of giving it all away. Such is the nature of love.
I’ve been thinking a lot about love lately. Love comes in all shapes and sizes, all colors and descriptions. I love the color blue. I love rock and roll and country and classical music. I love the paintings of Renoir and Van Gogh and Leonardo DaVinci and my friends Marion Mayer, Rande Brewer, and Fred Haberlein. I love the sculptures of Rodan. I love fishing and being out on any body of water. I love to travel. I love to fly and drive. I love my children and grandchildren…my brother, my family, my friends. These are all easy to love. Loving my enemies can be a challenge, I suppose. I can count on one hand really, the number of people who I genuinely dislike. But…while I may not go out of my way to have contact with them, I still love them.
When you condense everything, every little thing in this world, the lowest common denominator is love. It is the essence of life. And…while it is the baseline of all things, it is also the apogee of our life’s purpose. I love, therefore I am. When I love, I give my whole heart. This has been known to come back and bite me on occasion. But I would rather love with everything I have…even if it’s unrequited…than to never experience the feeling love gives me when it rushes out of my heart.
Nothing but love.
❤
“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.”
1 Corinthians 13:4-13 NIV