The Essence of True Love

No, its not a bacon-mutton lettuce sandwich. Seeing how as I touched briefly on it in the last post, I thought I'd post my thoughts about about it.

Love, its a loaded word. There are 3 main forms of the word love in Greek, one is philo, another is eros, and the other is agape. Philo means roughly to love with a general, or friendly type of affection. Its the standard type of love, not entirely deep or strong. Eros is the passionate love, a love between lovers, or a love beyond the regular love of philo roughly. Agape stands as the unique type of love; it is unconditional love. Zero limits, zero boundries, it loves unconditionally and anywhere, anytime, it is all encompassing. It is with Agape love that Jesus loves us. Agape love is really deep and rich. Agape love is the heart of God; its the love that reaches out to the lonely, the hurt, and the fearful. Its what can move us beyond ourselves to help others who are in need. Agape love gives.

True love gives. Unconditionally. The thing about true love that I like the most, is that it lights up the soul of a person you love in a agape way. Suddenly, all those maybe annoyances you have with that person, or how you perceive them negatively, are washed away when you realize, man, this person just needs a little agape love. That annoying co-worker, maybe he's hurting.

I have a co-worker who's pretty annoying. Most everyone hates him at work, and he's really annoying. And I feel kind of bad now, because it occured to me a couple days ago, that maybe I should try and talk and love on him instead of joining in all the rest of my co-workers negativity. I feel kind of bad for the guy; sometimes the annoying co-worker is going through something in life alone, and no one can understand him, so they do what people generally do when they are faced with the unknown; they become hostile. The world needs agape love, I'm realizing this more and more as I grow; we have so much hate, and fear, and hostility going around; people are tough, and defensive. We all wanna be loved. (Yea, that's right...Dc Talk ref)

Agape love is also used in relationships. I wonder if our exceedingly high divorce rate in America might have anything to do with a lack of agape love in relationships? Just a thought, because I know, when you agape love someone that you also eros love; you are able to reach past the mask, and see with opened eyes and touch their soul in a way that no one else can. Its like touching beauty. Beauty, not pretty. I get annoyed with the English language sometimes, because some words loose their meaning; beauty and pretty ARE NOT the same or interchangeable. Pretty is outward. There's a pretty flower, or a pretty girl...but can you look at them and say they are beautiful? To say something is beautiful, it requires you look at it inwardly; past what normal eyes see. A rose may look pretty because of the rich color, the lovely scent, the softness of the petals; but I find that it is beautiful because of that AND that it has an amazingly complex structure or organized cells that keep it alive and flourishing, that it like many plants, takes in harmful carbon-dioxide and breathes out oxygen.

Its similar with people too. I can see that a girl is pretty, but when I know who she is, and what she believes and see deeper into her character, only then can I say that I see something beautiful. It is the same for anyone.

Most fortunately, God is not limited in agape love to having to get to know us first, since He already knows us! This is exciting, because it means God sees you as beautiful. Not just pretty, beautiful. And not just sometimes, but all the time, unconditionally, even if you hurt Him...He can see you as beautiful with unclosed eyes.

I'm rather tired, so that concludes my shambling thoughts