What the World Needs Now . . . .
What the World Needs Now Is
L O V E
(A Crazy Little Thing Called Love)
By Kathleen L. Thach
As our current Sunday school series on Love Languages nears completion, I’ve been thinking a lot about love. What is love? As we’ve explored Gary Chapman’s concept of the ways we show and experience love to each other in relationships, we’ve gained some insight into why we at times don’t feel loved by a spouse or child or friend. And at other times we do.
But what is love?
I’ve been paying attention to how the word love is thrown about in everyday conversation. I do my share of it.
In 2004, my daughter asked me to email her a list of 100 things I love. At first I was sure I couldn’t come up
with a hundred things. But I did, and she made a framed art collage for me.
God wasn’t on my list. People weren’t on my list.
My rationale, I’m sure, was the operative word “things”. God and people aren’t things.
Yet not everything on my list was an object. Babies and pets and places and activities made the top one hundred.
So I ask myself again, what is love? Do I really love these things, or do I simply like or long for or desire these things?
Whatever the answer may be, I am convinced love is a much over-used and mis-used word.
So I embarked on one of my many cerebral and spiritual adventures.
I dusted off The Four Loves by C.S. Lewis and reread it.
I dusted off A. W. Tozer’s The Attributes of God and reread the chapter on Love.
I listened to Jared Wilson’s interview about his book Love Me Anyway.
I read the love section of Jessica Thompson’s How God Loves Us. Love, she reminds the reader, is first on the list of the Fruit of the Spirit found in Galatians.
I read various scripture passages dealing with love.
As I read, I felt the excitement and angst of being in deep water. How long would I stay there before going back to the shallows? There’s excitement in the depths and boredom in the shallows.
For now, I’ll be content, even happy, if I’ve whet your appetite for some in-depth examination of Love.
When I think about God’s Love for the world, I agree that what the world needs now is love. And when I think about God’s Love for you and me and all the other you’s and me’s in the world, it does seem crazy. But it’s not a crazy little thing. It’s a crazy big thing! Or should I substitute mystery for the word crazy.
Come out to Sunday school on April 24th for the introduction to this new series. Join me in the depths, the depths of understanding and experiencing a bit more of God’s love for us. And maybe we’ll find God’s love flowing through us to those around us.