On True Love – Sunday, November 30, 1980
One of the problems with verbal language is its inability to adequately express abstract thoughts or feelings. Take, for instance, the oft-spoken phrase, “I love you.” Three syllables, three short sounds, uttered daily wherever English is spoken; and yet, this simple phrase can represent a wide variety of feelings or thoughts.
When whispered between the young couple, across a candle lit table or under a full moon,
“I love you” suggests romance, desire, or idolization.
But when exchanged between those who have weathered long seasons of marriage together—periods of financial distress, the responsibilities of parenthood, sickness, and even tragedy—the words “I love you” may have quite a different meaning.
It is to this notion of mature love, which many times begins as infatuation, that we turn our thoughts today.
The enduring nature of true love sets it apart from its fleeting counterfeit. That is not properly called love which dissolves when confronted by adversity or change. Indeed, genuine affection cannot be altered by the transitory factors of circumstance because it has nothing to do with extrinsic things. It is, rather, an attachment to the intrinsic qualities of character, qualities which do not alter with changes in appearance or possessions.
Love is not love which wavers with the turns of fashion; nor does it falter with time’s theft of youthful looks; it will not disappear with the failure of health or prosperity.
It is as Shakespeare wrote: “. . . An ever fixed mark that looks on tempests, and is never shaken. . .”1
No, true love is not a weed which sprouts overnight, spontaneously along the roadside, without forethought or care.
Authentic love is a more exotic plant. It is a hybrid flower which must be nurtured and developed through the entire season of marriage; a flower which must be cultivated in a soil rich in respect and mutual understanding; a flower which blossoms only in a climate of patience, consistency, and continuous kindness.
As the Scottish poet Robert Burns observed, true love is “. , . like a red, red rose and will endure till all the seas run dry and rocks are melted by the sun. . .”2
1 William Shakespeare, The Pocket Book of Verse, The Pocket Library. 1956, p. 9.
2 Robert Burns. “Oh My Love’s Like a Red, Red Rose.”
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November 30, 1980
Broadcast Number 2,676