Active Love

Many of you are familiar with the old children's television show, Mr. Roger's Neighborhood. You may or may not know that besides being a TV celebrity, Fred Rogers was a Presbyterian minister. While he didn't preach on his show, his beliefs in the value of children and the importance of practicing neighborly love permeated every second of his air time. 

In his book, The World According to Fred Rogers: Important Things to Remember, Rogers writes:

Love isn't a perfect state of caring. It's an active noun like 'struggle'. To love someone is to strive to accept that person exactly the way he or she is, right here and now.

How I wish everyone understood this about love! My husband and I will be speaking on dating and romantic relationships to a room full of teenagers on Wednesday, Valentine's Day, and one of the best bit of wisdom we can share with them is exactly what Mr. Rogers said.

Love is not a feeling. Many young people (and older people too) equate love with the high-flying, excitable flutter of being with a certain person. But that feeling will not last. Maybe for a year or two, you will feel "in love". Then the person grows and changes. Or you see something in the person that you don't like. Or he/she does something that annoys you. Or hurts you. The "in love" feeling is gone, replaced by anger, sadness, and bitterness.

The only way for a marriage, or any relationship, to last and survive the negative times is by practicing true and deep, abiding love. This does not mean being kind to a person only what you feel like it. It is not a two-way street: I do something for you when you do something for me. It is not trying to change the person into someone you want him/her to be, or dwelling on the person that you had "loved" once upon a time. 

Love is an action verb. To love, one must act for the other's benefit. One will have to make compromises and sacrifices and put the other person first. One pushes through the ugliness that arises from our sin nature and strives to be a better person. Simply said, love is not passive. I Corinthians 13:4-7, though being a familiar, often-quoted passage, gives a great, "active", definition of love. Notice all the verbs used:

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. (ESV)

Valentine's Day is around the corner. Besides the usual romantic gestures, what can you do that day (and every day after) to show your loved ones that you LOVE them?