I Love Weddings

Love is patient and kind; 

love does not envy or boast; 

it is not arrogant or rude. 

It does not insist on its own way; 

it is not irritable or resentful; 

it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, 

but rejoices with the truth. 

Love bears all things, 

believes all things, 

hopes all things, 

endures all things.

~1 Corinthians 13:4-7

I have the honor of officiating a wedding last night.  I like weddings.  They are a time to celebrate the love that has grown between two lives to the point they want their lives to become one.  

I like weddings because it is during the ceremony where today's passage is read that the attendees are asked to remember the reason they love each other.  You see, the word used by the Apostle Paul in this passage is a word whose true meaning doesn't translate well from Greek into English, but I'm going to try.

The word Paul uses is "AGAPE".  This word indicates a feeling as a result of a conscious decision.  Therefore, true love is not a feeling...TRUE love is a CONSCIOUS DECISION which results in the feelings.  You see, every moment of every day, I decide to love my Bride. And because of that conscious decision, I smile every time I see her or think of her or get to talk about her and the feelings of love I have for her grow because of the conscious decision to love her.  And it is her decision to love me (which I know is quite the challenge at times).

Now, having said that, let's take this one step further.  We have been told that God loves us and we think "Yeah, yeah, God loves me, okay....big flipping deal."  But consider this: God made the conscious DECISION to love you even before time was time!  He didn't have to, but He did.  There are times He might wish He could reconsider His decision, but I rather doubt it.  Because the DECISION to love means God will love REGARDLESS what happens.  God will love whether you love Him back or not.  God will love you even when you hurt Him. God will love you even when you turn your back on Him and tell Him you don't believe He exists.

Once we understand that God loves us IN SPITE of us most of the time, we begin to love Him in return.  And because we love Him, we want to spend time talking with Him and listening to Him (after all He does have a lot of wisdom to share and quite the sense of humor. If you don't believe God has a sense of humor, look at the people you work with).  AND when we spend time with Him, our entire perception of the world will change from pessimist to realist to optimist.

So....if you take this definition of love and look at that famous verse John 3:16, you will see it reads a little more realistically:  "God CHOSE to love the world SO MUCH that He DECIDED to send His ONLY Son, so that whoever accepts God's love will never perish, but will live forever in His love."  Hmmm...don't know about you, but that makes a lot more sense to me than some vague ethereal image I had when I learned to recite it.