One Word...

Love.

This word and its meaning has been brewing in me for a week now.

Let me first back up and explain.

On Monday at my church's college group, our college pastor spoke on love and the Hebrew words for love. Now I had always heard about the Greek words for love ( agape, eros and philia) but no one has ever spoken about the Hebrew words.

Anyways, the Hebrew words for love are Raw-Aw - which is like the root of love; where all love stems from; when you can truly see a person in all their crap and still love them.

A-Hab-Ba - which is a deep affection; like "there's no other place I would rather be than with you" kind of love

And then there is Dode - which is the "mingling of souls". There's really no other way to describe it other than that.

I found these words fascinating 1. because I had never been taught them and 2. because they were all so deep. There wasn't a love that was just flippant. All the words had a commitment. They required a fair amount of sacrifice to use.

It really got me thinking about how I use the word 'love'. I've become so flippant with my usage that its become trivial. At least to other people it will sound trivial. I mean, what if I were talking about my favorite band (which is The Reign of Kindo right now. Fun Steven fact for ya) and about how much I love them and then turned to my best friends and say I love them too. I most certainly don't love my friends like I love The Reign of Kindo and they know that but still! They would never know the true value in that word when I use it.

A lot of us at this point would start to say, "I wish there was another word of love so we could differentiate". Which I totally agree with but we have to be realistic. We cannot change the English language. That's ridiculous. So because we cannot change the word for love in English our only alternative is to be cautious. We need to be mindful of what we say and how we say it.
We have one word for love.
It needs to count for something more.

Furthermore, in 1 John 4:8 it says "...whoever does not love, does not know God because God is Love..." So not only is the word love more than how we use it for everyday things, it's actually a descriptor of God Himself. In my head, that makes it even more sacred. And it kind of convicts me because if our Holy God chose that word to describe Himself then the last thing I should be doing is throwing it around every which way.

All in all, I felt like I needed to share that simply because it's been weighing on me and challenging me in how I convey my feelings. I don't want my words to mean nothing. When I speak there ought to be impact.

I hope this challenges anyone who is reading this on the interwebs to be careful what you say and how you say it and what your words actual mean when you say them. When you speak, it shouldn't be "a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal" it should strike to the heart and cause change. Our words are powerful, let's not take them for granted. Remember that God spoke the world in existence using words; "the Word was with God and the Word was God" and that the Word resides inside of us. With this knowledge, just imagine what our words can create in people's hearts and minds.

Till Next Time...