Love comes in all forms, right?
How someone shows how they love another person varies greatly. Every person does this in their own way… it is not the case that one way has more value than another.
When I grew up in the 70s and 80s, I was bombarded with all kinds of romantic ideas about love that were also very traditional: a house, a tree, a pet. This stood in stark contrast to my reality: my parents were getting divorced. Both remarried someone else, and they divorced them again as well. There was violence in the house every day. It was pure war. I grew up with a confused idea of what love actually is…
The lesson I did learn in my childhood was: love hurts and everyone abandons each other….How many children learn this at a young age? And how many adults therefore do not know whether expressing love for another person is actually safe? Or when someone says to you ‘I love you’ and you feel afraid. Or when you are together and think… how long is this going to last?
Don’t we all want to avoid potential (love) pain?
And yet we long for it, write about it, sing about it…
It may sound cliché, but for me, it is essential that I realize every day: God comes first.
This is something I didn’t really do for many years… people were in my top 5 and I paid a lot of attention to them. I was unaware of the fact that I was constantly seeking validation from the people around me: Do you still like me? Do you still love me? Am I still wanted? It made me afraid to be so dependent on the ‘love’ of others. Because there is so much brokenness among people and also within me…
A few years ago, it became clear to me that the Lord God is precisely the one I can always trust without having to be afraid… I am His child and He loves me.
Sometimes people ask me: ‘How do you know for sure that God loves you?’
- I trust that He tells the truth in His word ( = the Bible)
- I believe that He loves me
- Every day I choose to place my life in His hands in blind trust
- I feel that He loves me
- I experience, with all my senses, His love for us (and therefore also for me) in His creation
Workbook
To reflect on what the Lord God says about love in the Bible, I want to challenge you to do a little research on the internet. If you were to go to an online Bible and type the word love in the search function, all kinds of references to texts in which the word love appears will appear.
- What do you notice?
- What are the differences between the Old Testament and the New Testament?
- Which text speaks to you personally? It might be nice to think about the texts you have found for a few days. You can let the texts sink in, pray about them, or discuss them with others.
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