What’s Love Got To Do With It?

I can hear Tina Turner in my head now, “What’s love got to do, got to do with it, what’s love but a second-hand emotion, what’s love got to do, got to do with it, who needs a heart when a heart can be broken?”  Good question and she’s got a point!

I have thought often over the years that people are the best and worst part of life!  I know that may sound harsh, but let me explain.  Family and friendship can be so beautiful and sweet.  It is truly one of life’s greatest gifts to have someone who knows you in all your imperfectness and loves you still.  There is also the fact that if we love, we will get hurt and that part isn’t my favorite!  Relationships of all kinds at their best take time, work, attention, compromise and you will walk through times that are just plain hard.  I have just recently walked through this where I felt like I had poured into someone, let them in, only to have them betray me.  It was shocking, it was unexpected, it hurt deeply, it still stings and my immediate reaction is to want to shut down, put walls around my heart and not let anyone else in.

How do you react when someone mishandles the love you have shown?  What do you do when someone throws away the time and memories and you can’t make sense of it?  What do you do with the hurt when there is no “I’m sorry” and no explanation?  You may ask yourself as Ms. Turner did, “who needs a heart when a heart can be broken?”  I know that thought has crossed my mind lately.  These feelings are normal and completely understandable but they are not the final word.

1 Corinthians 13 known as the LOVE chapter says this:

If I could speak all the languages of earth and of angels, but didn’t love others, I would only be a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. ² If I had the gift of prophecy, and if I understood all of God’s secret plans and possessed all knowledge, and if I had such faith that I could move mountains, but didn’t love others, I would be nothing. ³ If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it; but if I didn’t love others, I would have gained nothing.

⁴ Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud ⁵ or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. ⁶ It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. ⁷ Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.

⁸ Prophecy and speaking in unknown languages and special knowledge will become useless. But love will last forever! ⁹ Now our knowledge is partial and incomplete, and even the gift of prophecy reveals only part of the whole picture!¹⁰ But when the time of perfection comes, these partial things will become useless.

¹¹ When I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child. But when I grew up, I put away childish things. ¹² Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely.

¹³ Three things will last forever—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love.

You see my friend, love has EVERYTHING to do with it!  Love is why He came, Love is why He went to the cross, Love is why He is faithful, Love is why He is persistent, Love is why He is so kind, Love is why He keeps on forgiving, Love is why He stays.

And so I have my answer, Love is why I will forgive, Love is why I will keep showing up, Love is why I will humble myself, Love is why I will open my heart again, Love is why and it has EVERYTHING to do with it!

Three things will last forever – faith, hope, and love – and the GREATEST of these is love ❤