Keeping Love Alive

by HJS

In Papua New Guinea, when a young man wants to marry, his family will arrange a marriage with a younger woman who has promise of making an adequate wife. Pooling the family resources, the groom pays fifteen to twenty pigs for the bride. Forget love and romance. This is the working arrangement.

"How can people learn to love?" I am often asked. First, while romance is important, it's of short duration compared to the impact of love, which is a commitment, not simply an emotional high. Love and romance are often considered to be two sides of the same coin. They are different. But if a marriage is to survive as a vibrant, meaningful, long-term relationship, a love between two people has to develop, whether it begins in courtship or after the marriage.

Approaching the bottom line, we have to ask, "What is love?" In tennis love means "nothing"; in marriage, it means everything.

C. S. Lewis  wrote, "When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love them. If you injure someone you dislike, you will find yourself disliking him more. If you do him a good turn, you will find yourself disliking him less." So the way to fall in love is... to love, to treat the other as you want to be treated, to realize that with God's command to love comes the enabling of the Holy Spirit, who brings us into a relationship with God's Son who is love - the purest love the world has ever seen.

Love is a decision, a commitment to care, and the heart can love regardless of the emotional temperature that rises and falls with the emotional bumps and grinds of life.

Husbands, love your wives....   EPHESIANS 5:25