There’s something about love, true love, that sets our soul free. It gives an abundance and meaning to life that is both immeasurable and indescribable.

To receive love and to give love isn’t something we naturally know how to do well. For it’s supernatural. We may know a feeling of “love”, but we also know how fleeting those feelings can be. Some might describe love as a commitment, which no doubt it is, but a commitment born out of deep gratitude, not duty and obligation. For it’s not militant acts of service, but rather expressions of choice.

For example, how many of us have seen marriages last for decades, but there is no love there. The relationship is dutiful, obligated, and dead.

I speak of a bond and commitment that comes from saying “I choose you. No matter what may come, I wantingly, and willfully choose you. I give my love to you, and knit my life together with yours.

Not to cling to, or to be clung to, but to be a safe place of love and kindness that helps encourage the other to spring out into the world and into all they’re called to do – individually and collectively. This love is more eager to give than to take, to share than consume, and to offer than demand.

Love like this flows like rivers from heaven from the Creator of love and life. For God loves us like this – He says I choose you. I love you, and no matter what you may choose, my kindness, goodness, and care will pursue you for all the days of your life. I love you always and forever. I hope you will love me too, I want this, but I will never demand it from you. I give it, because I can do no less.

Life overflows from this kind of love. It’s liberating, life giving, and unrelenting despite the daggers desperate to destroy it. This love lives on, grows, nourishes, frees, and heals as one of God’s greatest blessings to be shared, valued, nurtured, and treasured with another.

For Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. 1 Corinthians 13:7