Guest help: What's love got to do with it?

In days of yore when flying was my vocation, we would have pilots fly with us from other organizations.  We called them "guest help."  This noon I read a musing that I thought would be worthy of your time.  I may be biased as the author is my son.  Nonetheless, some incisive observations on love and relationship from one married less than a year.

"What's that Love thing again?"
by Drew Pond

If love is butterflies, goosh, giggles, and smiles….if love is holding hands while walking through daisies….if love is dancing in the rain…if love is eros, fire, and heat…if love is a hidden kiss….then love is garbage.

Work recently granted me the opportunity to instruct my fellow employees in the ways of love.  I occupied the only seat for a married person at the round table of conversation.  I do not remember how the conversation was spawned, but one of my esteemed coworkers made the observation that, in a marriage, you do not always love your spouse.  There are times when you even hate them, and that is ok.  The important thing is that you hold the knowledge that you will be there at the end of the day.   This individual labeled marriage as a lifelong exercise in turmoil.

Recently married, I hated what I heard.  I realize now that the people, including many professing Christians, have no concept of true love.  So often our definition of love and our attitude towards it varies with our moods.  I will love my wife just so long as I am in a good mood and we always agree.  That sounds more like a friendship between five-year olds.  “You made me mad, so I’m gonna take my ball and go home.  You’re not my friend anymore!!”  “We yell, bicker, and call names, but it is ok.  At the end of the day we will still be in the same house.”   How is that for quality of life?

I countered the misguided meanderings of the ignorant with the Biblical perspective.  Many of you, I am sure, are familiar with Ephesians 5:25 “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself for it,” as well as verse 22 of the same chapter, “Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord.”  I refuse to get too involved in all the in's and out's of these verses now.  Many people have written many books to that end.  I simply want to highlight what love is.  In both of these verses an illustration is given commanding a practice we all tend to do very naturally.  (Please sense the sarcasm in that last phrase.)

SACRIFICE.  Yeah, I know that a complete sentence requires a subject and a verb, but try to lose yourself in the dramatic effect of the capital letters.  Sacrifice and servitude are concepts utterly foreign to our humanistic, hedonistic society.  However, these principles exemplify TRUE LOVE, they are the practices that make a marriage last.  A desire to submit, love, and sacrifice comes from sensitivity to the Holy Spirit and separation from sin (the lusts of the flesh).   Familiarity with the ultimate show of deference, Christ in Gethsemane, spurs the one born-again to follow the example of their Savior in exhibition of love.  John 15:12-13 “This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.  Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends.”  Not only did Jesus give up his life by death, but he gave up his desire for the cup to pass from him in order to fulfill the will of the Father and provide salvation to all.

If a marriage is to work, if we are to exhibit true love, we must be willing to submit ourselves to the will of the Father, to defer our wants and needs out of love for another, and to sacrifice ourselves for another.  It is possible, it is hard, but it is commanded, and it is amazing.  Woe to the marriage where it is absent or viewed as optional.

Well said, Drew.

(Reprinted without permission with minor editions from his Facebook page)