February 7, 2010: Living and Giving Forgiveness – Michael Hidalgo

“How do you know when you are in love?” The typical response to this question is, “You will just know.” If the person being asked were honest he or she would say, “There is no answer to that question, because it is the wrong question.” Being “in love” is a myth. This speaks toward a feeling that some call the warm fuzzies that one person has for another. Over time, everyone knows, the warm fuzzies slowly fade and become less frequent. Then the two fall “out of love” typically much faster and more painfully than they fell in.

 

This myth is perpetuated in our culture because love is marketed as a feeling that one causes you to feel. However, the love spoken of in the Scriptures in a practice, a way of living toward others, that one chooses. Three times humans are commanded to “love their neighbor” and it is always in the context of vengeance, grudges, and division. Not a very romantic setting in which to speak of love. But it does bear the reality of it. We choose to love. And love is not a disposition as much as it is a practice, a way one chooses to live toward another.