What it means to love

My daughter, Autumn Joy Hansen, was born on November 28, 2009.  That day my heart learned once again what it was to love.  But that love was not yet complete.  You see, love is not just feeling completely passionate.  In that moment I would have given anything for my daughter, everything for my wife.  But the problem was, I didn’t have any clue as to what that surrender, what that love would look like.

While I was a student at Simpson University, there was a quote on a board in one of the dorms.  It went something like this- “How can you die for me if you are not willing to live for me?”  That one hit me hard.  So often we think that dying a physical death is the ultimate expression of love.  What I am finding more and more is that dying to one’s self is what love is all about. That is not to say that dying so that one might live is not an expression of love, but it must come out of the willingness to live.

But what then does it mean to love my wife, to love my daughter, to love my neighbor?  For the answer I turned to three books- First and foremost I turned to the Bible.  Second I turned to To Train up a Child, and third I turned to Facedown.  There is a lot to be learned from in the Old Testament, but for this particular study I started in the Gospels, namely Matthew and John.  Jesus, speaking to his disciples before leaving them, states:

“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.”

The challenge brought forth here is incredible.  About to give his life, Christ defines love.  Love is giving not what only what one wants (sometimes not even what one wants), but what one needs.  Love is challenging others to say what they mean, and mean what they say.  Love is to give up all for the sake of the Heavenly Father, for the sake of your neighbor.  Love is giving what you do not yet have.  Love is doing what is right.  Love is to discipline, to correct, to rebuke.  Love is to have peace.  Love is to have joy.  Love is to be humble.  Love is to be holy.  And when the time has come, love is to lay down one’s life.