To Love – Sunday, January 31, 1982
Speak to one another of love. We all have feelings of love, of being loved, of being in love. Why is it that this means so much to us? It is because it is the essence of the human experience. Oh yes, love is fickle, and some think love is blind. But we will do for love that which we would never consider for any other purpose.
We define the depth and quality of person’s love by that person’s willingness to sacrifice. We would not take seriously the love of someone who said, “I will love you, so long as it does not cost me anything; so long as 1 need not change to love you; so long as my love is economical.”
One of the evidence of love is the ability to sacrifice self. Sacrifice is the evidence and virtue of love. Without this sort of “sacrificial love” there would be less silliness, fewer sentimental poems, perhaps even greater reasonableness in the world. But on the other hand, there would also be no heroism, no charity, no feeling. And so, in spite of the burden that it sometimes is, in spite of the fretting bother that it can bring to our lives, we know that love is essential, fundamental to humanity. And the inability to love, freedom from the need to be loved, is neither independence nor clarity of vision; it is an emotional deformity.
“Walk in love,” Paul told the Saints of Ephesus, ”as Christ hath loved US,1 And to the Saints of Thessalonica he said, “The Lord made you to increase and abound in love one toward another, and toward all men…to the end He may establish your hearts unblameable before God.”2
And what of love of God? We learn to love God through loving mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, husbands, wives, and neighbors. Indeed, true love does not obscure vision; true love is the one means by which we can truly see.
Scottish poet Robert Burns wrote a poem of love, “Flow Gently, Sweet Afton.” A poem that speaks of quiet, heartfelt expression; a poem that reminds us in a moment of tenderness that to love and be loved is to see more clearly than is possible in any other way.
1 Ephesians 5:2
2 Thessalonians 3:12-13
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January 31, 1982
Broadcast Number 2,737