Love

Robin and I went to a wedding of some our good friends this past weekend. So I had a small role in the wedding, and after my part was done I stood there thinking about what marriage is supposed to be based on. I think it should be based on love, but I think many times we sorely misunderstand what love means and what it is.

Love is not that you think your beloved is always hot, or that you don't ever get annoyed with them. Love is not about pretending that your beloved is flawless. Love isn't about butterflies or good feelings. It isn't always being with that person or even necessarily about respecting that person. It isn't about wanting to start a family or buy a house. Love isn't about Train songs or sex.

Easy enough to say what love isn't, but what is it?

Marital love is covenant. That is all.

Love is about being true to someone even if you don't feel like it that day. Hopefully it starts with some kind of warm fuzzies. Hopefully there are some basic attractions at the beginning, hopefully love songs break out during your first kiss and all that. But that type of infatuation should gradually be replaced by something much more real, and much less emotional. It should be replaced by knowing someone and being known. It should gradually come to realize that the beauty in the beloved was not really ever about the external beauty, but about some internal beauty that was merely shining through in the beginning.

This is why we suck at marriage in our country. We don't recognize the old as it is leaving, and we panic and don't recognize the new as it comes in. We mistake the first types of feelings for real love, but in reality they are mere infatuation. We think that for some reason we should always get tingly, but really we are settling for McDonald's when we are offered prime rib. We just don't have the patience to cook it or to wait for it. We settle for the lesser because that is all that is depicted in crap movies and stupid love songs. We think for some reason that these celebrities who can't stay faithful for a few months are more qualified to speak of marital love than the God who created us all. God loves in the way that we should love, and that is in a covenental type of way.