Love Is...a way of living

Love is a way of living. We associate love with feelings. Feelings that are ethereal, captivating and compelling. When we experience love from another person in its purity and passion these feelings emerge, yet love is what we give, it's how we live. We experience love and offer love. Love is a posture of my heart, mind and soul that must be anchored in truth that stretches beyond circumstances.

Love must be truer than the ups and downs so that it can be sustained through the ups and downs.

Love must be who I am. Think about some of the most compelling lives ever lived: Martin Luther King Jr., Mother Theresa, Jesus of Nazareth. They embodied a deep connection to living a life of love. Love is the way they lived. Each lived through significant strife, persecution and difficult daily realities, yet each lived with an anchor set deep in their soul. They loved the people around them. They lived love.

If we hope to experience love, we must embrace love as a way of living.

While love elicits feelings, it is deeper than feelings. While I can think loving thoughts, love runs truer than my thoughts. While I can act with love, love is purer than my actions. In every aspect of my life, love calls me to a deeper, steadier way of living. Love must become the foundation, the anchor, the path on which I journey. Love is a way of living. Love is not the reactive experience of my life, it must be the trajectory of my life in all things. In order to experience the relational connections I believe we long for, we must allow love to become the way we live every day.

Join me on the journey of love and check back for the next entry in the "Love Is..." series.

Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.
(1 Corinthians 13:4-7, NLT)