"Love Is"

We look around us and no one has to convince us in any shape there is evil! Read the headline news, listen to the radio and watch those you work around. Look at your family and reflect on how you have been affected by some display of evil. Crime rates soar, prisons are overflowing, nations are brutalizing one another, children are being abused even before they are born as well as after, murder is common, pornography rears its ugly head on the television, movie theaters and the Internet, divorce is acceptable and the hate that is spewed from it, adultery is glamorized and greed is stealing the hearts of multitudes. People berate one another as we live in a dog-eat-dog world. People are takers! Children have learned to be unthankful and always want more as they learned from the parents. You hear, "Don't get mad, get even!" attitudes that come from the lips of so many. Books are written about marital infidelities and become best sellers, soap operas glue people's attention to find out who is having an affair with whom and jealously rages forward. The sleazy bars, drug barons and those addicted to drugs and alcohol seem to be unending. Injustice in our courts and the corruption in the government seems to be the norm. Prolonged suffering for some robs them of their sanity to commit crimes of horrid proportion. Children kill their parents and parents kill their children. It's all depressing wouldn't you say?

Let me give you some amazing news: LOVE IS! In all the above we read and see, isn't it still amazing that love has not and cannot be killed? In all this world of evil, love does not beg for room, it does scream to be heard and it doesn't act like it has no right to be here. Rather than force it's way into lives, it just quietly walks right in the middle of all the garbage and junk and amazingly survives. I'm not speaking of the feeling, tingly natural human love. I am speaking of the self sacrificing love that only comes from above. I am speaking of a sacrificing love of a person who endures the torment of alcoholism from a family member doing everything they can to help while taking abuse on a level no one understands but God. The love that is seen in the wife who can forgive from the heart marital infidelity while the husband shrugs it off as meaning little, wanting to "forget about it and move on" attitude and she faithfully moves forward in her life enduring a pain in her heart while sacrificing love motivates her. The sacrificing love of woman working diligently because of a husband that is too lazy and is always taking.The love that causes men and women to live sacrificially and joyfully, filling their world with the things of God. The love that sacrifices to keep a mate at home when there is no possibility to regain health, but they want to care for that mate day in and day out. A sacrificing love to assemble to worship when a mate is rebellious toward the Lord and does whatever they can to diminish the glory of God. Yes....LOVE IS! As long as there is Jesus...LOVE IS! This sacrificing love is quietly seen in such a world of ours and speaks, telling us that God is in control!!!