What Love Means to Jack Harvey

I feel like everyone has their own version of love. Yes, there's some overlap, but love to me could be completely different from what love is to you. For me I see love in a lot of different ways. I see it literally as the word to say "oh yeah I love country music" or "I love being outside", but also in a deeper way such as "I love my family" and "I love God." But what does it really mean to me, not just in the literal terms of a sentence? Love has taken many forms in my life, and I feel like God continues to show his love for me each and every day in a unique way. I think the most obvious example is through people. It's when my mom stays up to talk for an hour when I need to talk even though it's past her bedtime. It's also my friend Miguel continuing to pick me up when I didn't have a car even though I made him late to things. But there's also the little things, like a beautiful sunset or the way something just mysteriously worked out perfectly. Just yesterday I was taking a midday nap and had set my alarm for what I thought was 1pm so that I would have plenty of time to get to my 1:50pm class on time, but I woke up at 1:23pm confused at what happened to my alarm. I didn't even have time to really think about my alarm and immediately ran downstairs and to my car. I ended up walking in at 1:52 which was incredibly clutch, because 3 minutes late is a tardy. And I forgot to mention this was the FIRST day of this class, so I could not be showing up late. I later found out my alarm had been set for 1:00am instead of 1:00pm. This seems really small, but I just had to think, man, that's crazy that I just happened to wake up perfectly on time so I could get there with SECONDS to spare. That might not seem like much, but I think little things like that show how God loves us and is watching out for us. 

It feels like everything is intertwined with love in some way, almost like it's the special ingredient God put in everything. In a technical sense, everything really is. God is Love itself, and He's the creator of all things. What creator of something doesn't leave his own mark? Though there are many things that make us human, the thing that ties us all together is love which makes sense because it brings us back to the thing we all have in common: Our Creator. This same creator demonstrated perfect love through the death of His Son on the cross, "For god so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life." John 3:16. This is what perfect love is. God humbled himself down to the point of death on a cross, dying to Himself. This could be seen as an extreme example, because nobody, hopefully, has loved one's being crucified, but when people around me make little sacrifices, I feel like I see a glimpse of the love that God displayed on the cross. When my mom is choosing to stay up and talk to me, she is dying to herself but sacrificing her own desires. Same with my friend Miguel. This is what love really means to me, and I believe this is the kind of love God is talking about when He says that the greatest commandment is love. A good question to ask ourselves each day is how can I represent Christ today? How can I represent in some small way, or big way, the love he showed us on the cross? I'd like to end this blog with a verse that sums all of this up perfectly, "Greater love has no one that this:to lay down one's life for one's friends." John 15:13.

Written by:Jack Harvey