I enjoy conducting weddings. As couples declare their love for each other to family and friends, I invite guests to renew their own vows and to offer the newlyweds support and space to help them grow together.
As love grows, romance advances through initial attraction, special moments to get to know each other and discovering common interests.
Then, by working through inevitable points of difference, love deepens and develops new strengths – anticipated or unexpected – for stepping towards the future.
For love is more than a good feeling, it has four powerful effects:
Lifting our morale, our mood, and our worldview.
Opening new horizons, revealing new opportunities – even within obstacles.
Valuing us for who we are underneath – regardless of our appearance, our possessions, our gender, our income or our shortcomings. All so that instead of using people and loving things, we may start loving people and using things.
Energising us to keep going and growing, whatever challenges we face.
We may see love as a measure of personal growth or wellbeing, but love is meant to be given away.
Not only for romance or in any condescending way, but with the kind of respect that raises people’s morale, their self-confidence and their awareness of all they may bring to their world.
We may find it easy to love people who we like, for we just go with the flow.
But it is not so easy to love people who do not respond; and even harder to love those who dislike us, or who react aggressively.
God is behind this process, for love is his heartbeat for our world, available to us and through us, so we may follow him in reaching people who are hard to reach.
His love even goes so far that Jesus prayed to forgive his killers and those who were thrilled to see him being executed.
Because his love is stronger than death, he came back so he could release this love to anyone who accepts him, and to begin turning people around on the inside, rather than from external pressure.
His turnarounds have been happening for centuries, beginning with Saul, a hired religious assassin, who became Paul the Apostle.
Paul’s spiritual 180-degree turn saw him start to plant churches – churches he had sworn to destroy – and spread God’s love wherever he went.
And anyone can respond to this love – whoever we are.
Noel Mitaxa
On behalf of a church near you, inviting you to explore God’s love
