If love makes the world go round, then it’s clear why the world isn’t doing very well. The tragic reality is that most of us don’t truly know what real love or friendship looks like, and so we spend a lifetime living with only a shadow of the real thing. Our ability to cultivate an intimate love relationship with God is directly connected to our ability to have deep, meaningful love relationships with others.
Our most natural desire is to feel needed and loved. So we do whatever we can to earn that love from others. From birth to death, we are on an eternal search for love. And when we find it, the fear of losing it often causes us to act irrationally. We constantly wonder if others still like or love us. And when we suspect they don’t, we spiral into self-doubt, blaming ourselves—or them—for what went wrong.
Everyone needs love because God is love. Everyone needs acceptance, which is what true, unconditional love from God looks like. Love is all about freedom, while fear is all about control. Interestingly, hate is not the first enemy of love—fear is. Fear destroys our ability to trust. Because we feel insecure, we crave love from others to validate our own worth.
When I was growing up in the 1950s, I would never walk by a penny on the ground without picking it up. Today, I probably wouldn’t bend down for a penny—maybe for a dime, maybe a nickel—but not a penny. It’s not that pennies are everywhere; I still notice them. Worthless as they seem, they’re still worth noticing. Isn’t that just like our attitude toward love? Love is worth far more than a penny, but it’s also more common. Yet we pass by it every day without a second thought.
We should ask ourselves: Have I become too busy or too important to stoop for love? When I kiss my wife goodnight, is it just a ritual, or is it love? Do I treat her like a penny—insignificant and easy to overlook—or as the priceless treasure she truly is? How often do I pass love by, failing to recognize it in the small moments of life? Love is all around us—like air, like low-hanging fruit on a tree, there for the taking.
There’s no shortage of love. It’s always in front of us in abundance. But we often choose to be blind to it, distracted by what we think are more urgent matters. We know love isn’t worthless like a penny, so why do we treat it that way? Why don’t we take time to truly love?
For most of my life, I believed some people were just easier to love than others. The easy ones were kind, funny, smart, good-natured, and engaging. The harder ones? Well, they were the quirky characters in my life. But the truth is, difficult people need love just as much—if not more—than the easy-going ones. In a world so quick to judge, we often feel that people must prove themselves “worthy” of our love. But even when someone’s behavior is difficult, how can we not choose to love them for who they truly are at their core?
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