To be human is to love. We become our best and truest selves only when we stop focusing on ourselves and start loving others. Love gives richness and beauty to life. People who love are able to keep going forward during difficulties and experience authentic joy.
True love, real love, is always selfless and centered on others. While healthy self-esteem can be good for us, self-centeredness can be as empty as no love at all. Love always turns us outward, not inward.
Of the many types of love, romantic love is perhaps the most talked about. Countless songs, poems, and movies depict wistful, starry-eyed couples falling in love. But there’s so much more to a successful, loving relationship.
It may help to learn from those who know what it takes to build such a relationship. When couples who have been married over 50 years were asked what it was that kept them together, they said it wasn’t romance. It was “a deep, caring friendship.” It was “the ability to enjoy each other’s company” and share one another’s interests. It sounds simple, but this kind of love takes time and effort. In some ways, relationships are like a garden, a car, or a home. They need constant care, periodic tune-ups, and occasional repairs.
We know what it means to maintain a house, a car, or a flowerbed. But what does that kind of careful maintenance look like in a relationship? It means being thoughtful and caring. It means doing things together. It means sacrificing for and serving one another. Anything that shows we value and care about the relationship can nourish love—and, when necessary, revive it.
One man writes a love poem to his wife every year on her birthday. A woman sends a weekly email to her grown children letting them know they’re loved. Siblings gather twice a year to help their sister in need of home and yard care. In every case, love is the reason.
Love is what gives meaning to life—but only when we are willing to offer a bit of our lives to give meaning to our love.
1. See Julie Walker, “Strong Marriages Need More Than Romance, Says BYU Researcher,” BYU News, Jan. 31, 2003, news.byu.edu/news/strong-marriages-need-more-romance-says-byu-researcher.
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March 31, 2020
Broadcast Number 4,733
The Tabernacle Choir
Orchestra at Temple Square
Conductor
Mack Wilberg
Organist
Richard Elliott
Host
Lloyd Newell
Praise to the Lord, the Almighty
German hymn tune; arr. Mack Wilberg
Be Thou My Vision
Traditional Irish hymn; arr. Mack Wilberg
This Is My Father’s World
English folk melody; arr. Dale Wood
Lovely Appear, from The Redemption
Charles Gounod
Love Is a Song
Frank Churchill; arr. Arthur Harris
Hold On, from The Secret Garden
Lucy Simon; arr. Ryan Murphy
A Gaelic Blessing
John Rutter