I have witnessed a great love, and my life and the lives of my children and husband will be better for it. I have seen the beauty of age, and the power of of a lifetime investment in a relationship. For more than sixty years, my Grandma and Papa have laughed, loved, argued, cried, and felt every variation of emotion together. They have known the magic of fresh love, the strength of a love that has been tested with loss, and shared the unique love that comes with parenting and grand-parenting. I have felt their love as it’s been passed down to me both through them and through my dad. When you have a great love, it can not be contained, it pours out and spills onto the people around you. My dad grew up under this love and has mirrored it into his own marriage and parenting and now I do my best to honor it by passing it through to my own family branch.
I was not so fortunate as to have personally known the love between my other two grandparents, but I know it was a great love as well. I know this because their love spilled out and was shared to my mom and then down to me. I have heard the stories of their love and seen pictures where they are obviously joyful together, but the real evidence is in in the way that my mom loved her mom. My granddaddy passed away when I was very young, so I have very limited memories of him, but Maw Maw stayed with us until about 2 years ago. The theme of her life was love. She passionately loved her church, her family, her friends, and her Savior. When she spoke of her husband, it was always in love and in longing for him, even after he had been gone for more than twenty years. Maw Maw took that great love and spilled it over, into her children and then to her grandchildren.
When the Bible says that love is not selfish, I typically think about it being generous towards others. But I think that other facet of love not being selfish, is that it doesn’t keep to itself. People who truly love, love fully and over flowingly until it spills over, onto everyone around them. It is not possible to keep a great love for yourself or one other person. If it’s great love, it can not be contained like that.
God, by definition, is love. That explains a lot, doesn’t it? I used to wonder why He created people. He knew we were going to fail Him and that we would cost Him a lot of pain and frustration, so why bother? I think it was because He must have an outlet to share Himself and give of Himself.
Because He is love, He loves us.
Because He is love, He gave Himself for us.
Because He is love, He loved us before we were even capable of loving Him back.
That, my friends, is great love.
