What is Love? Anyone can provide an answer to this question.
If you refer to the bible, I Corinthians 4:8,13 has a few things to say about love. To paraphrase: “Love is kind and patient. It’s never jealous, boastful, proud or rude. Love is not selfish or quick tempered. It doesn’t keep a record of wrongs that others do. Instead love rejoices in the truth but not in evil; love always is supportive, loyal, hopeful and trusting. Love never fails. There are faith, hope and love but of these three the greatest is love.” Love can indeed go far beyond our limits.
From a Christian perspective, Jesus Christ died on the cross to save all sinners. True love never cares for the self more than the welfare of others. In order to help and do good deeds for others, one should have an intention to do so; an intention with authentic power that is. What is authentic power? It means that the Holy Spirit is with the soul and personality. When the Holy Spirit is within you, this makes you live in love. Love is the intention of the soul.
At one time or another in your life, you may have felt that God is within you. The same God is within everyone. When God is in you, you don’t or try not to hurt others by actions or words, instead you love others. So God is Love. When God is with in you, you love all.
How can you share (keep) love during times of trials? Look at the following example: suppose your best friend or even one of your own family members turns out to be your enemy and turns out to be quite jealous of you? Perhaps they create some story or something you never said and they gossip about you to others and as a result create more enemies for you. What will you do and how can you keep love for them always?
Situations like the ones presented above, should not cause you to panic or feel hurt in your heart. You know yourself very well, so don’t worry; you didn’t do anything wrong even though they created a story about you. Pray for them and God will give you a reward. Think that these things are happening to you, even though you are innocent, it means there is some reason you must learn something out of it. The New Testament tells us that, Jesus Christ prayed for those enemies that put him on the cross. He said, “Father they don’t know what they are doing, forgive them.” So we can also forgive our enemies thorough love. That’s true love.
Again, sometimes you work so hard and you live your life very prayerfully but you never prosper. Sometimes you may hurt physically, as well as mentally. So why do you think this is happening to you?
Try to understand that everything in this world is happening to you is doing so for some reason. All these experiences will make you stronger and a more faithful person, and as a matter of fact, a better person. Remember we all came to this planet on one reason alone. That is to learn and correct our mistakes, so that we can lead ourselves to be closer to God.
Again look at a person who hates you and is so jealous of you for everything you do. When you look at that individual, his/her personality may appear to be very cruel but think about his/her inner being (soul) came to this planet to learn and love everything and everyone, so that the soul could become closer to God. The soul behind the personality has good intentions, but the physical mind is filled with jealousy and hatred. So don’t hate the person. Love the person. It is indeed a good thing to pay attention to your inner voice.
Take a moment and think why you are on this earth? Why did you come here to this planet? What good deeds are you performing to take with you to heaven? Realize that we are not alone; God’s Spirit is always with us and within us, unless we neglect God’s voice (which is also within us). Physically you may be poor, sick or ordinary people, but spiritually you are not. We are all God’s children in human form on an evolutionary path. The most important thing we have to learn is how to love. Through love we can do so many good things. We can help others, ourselves and most of all we can please God almighty. The scriptures of the New Testament state that, God loved the world so much that he gave his only son to die on Calvary, to save all the sinners. We are created with a physical body and mind and also we are created with spiritual body (soul). So we have good and bad nature within us.
But remember that God is within us all the time; I think we should realize that and try to live more like Him, and display true love, as he did for us. After all, His main characteristic is love.
