Joy is essential in bearing life’s burdens.
We all have burdens, but we can choose to respond in despair or in joy. How is it possible to find joy in the midst of your difficulties?
We need joy in order to have the strength to live the Christian life.
These things I have spoken to you, that My joy may remain in you, and that your joy may be full.
~John 15:11
WOW, God loves us SO much, beyond anything we can even imagine.
Blessed,
JB
Showing posts with label real love. Show all posts
Showing posts with label real love. Show all posts
Friday, February 21, 2014
Sunday, February 16, 2014
Friday, April 5, 2013
Contemplating love
From a friend's blog
II: LOVE
Peck defines love as "The will to extend one's self for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's spiritual growth" (Peck 81). We are simply incapable of loving another unless we love ourselves first. By defining love as a will, he claims that it's a choice rather than a desire. Love, unlike "falling in love," is not effortless.
"Falling in love" is a feeling linked with sexual or erotic experience. Think of who you have fallen in love with in the past. They were probably not a family member or best friend. The ecstatic feeling of falling in love allows us a temporary escape from the loneliness of our individual identities. This means that the harder you fall in love, the lonelier you were before you met the person you're in love with - an unfortunate truth. Falling in love, according to Peck, is a trick that our genes pull on our minds to trap us into marriage. This trick is especially fostered by our culture's illusion of a "happily ever after." But what happens when this honeymoon period is over? Well, then there is the chance for real love to develop.
Ironically, real love is not rooted in the feeling of love. Sometimes we act loving when we don't feel loving. But real love is an extension of oneself. It is permanently rewarding to the lover and the beloved. Love is rooted in the acceptance of the separate individual identities of the persons involved. Love is not dependency, self-sacrifice, or a feeling. Love is discipline, separateness, the work of attention, and a risk (of loss, independence, commitment, and confrontation). More so than anything else, love is a mystery.
II: LOVE
Peck defines love as "The will to extend one's self for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's spiritual growth" (Peck 81). We are simply incapable of loving another unless we love ourselves first. By defining love as a will, he claims that it's a choice rather than a desire. Love, unlike "falling in love," is not effortless.
"Falling in love" is a feeling linked with sexual or erotic experience. Think of who you have fallen in love with in the past. They were probably not a family member or best friend. The ecstatic feeling of falling in love allows us a temporary escape from the loneliness of our individual identities. This means that the harder you fall in love, the lonelier you were before you met the person you're in love with - an unfortunate truth. Falling in love, according to Peck, is a trick that our genes pull on our minds to trap us into marriage. This trick is especially fostered by our culture's illusion of a "happily ever after." But what happens when this honeymoon period is over? Well, then there is the chance for real love to develop.
Ironically, real love is not rooted in the feeling of love. Sometimes we act loving when we don't feel loving. But real love is an extension of oneself. It is permanently rewarding to the lover and the beloved. Love is rooted in the acceptance of the separate individual identities of the persons involved. Love is not dependency, self-sacrifice, or a feeling. Love is discipline, separateness, the work of attention, and a risk (of loss, independence, commitment, and confrontation). More so than anything else, love is a mystery.
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