Love is all around! Well, it is most the time, but we are all very aware of it in February. Love is a very strange but wonderful emotion. It must be the only entity that the more of it that you use the more there is of it. When two people fall in love they are convinced that they love each other with their whole hearts and there is no love available for anyone else. But then put a child in their lives, not necessarily a birth child, and suddenly their capacity to love gets bigger. Its not diluted or divided but expanded. There are many kinds of love too. The obvious first one for the month of February is romantic love. It is a special feeling to love someone and even better if they love you in return. It certainly leads to many songs, books, and poems. Where would we be without romance? There is the love of family members and friends. I can quite clearly remember falling out with my sister and calling her names but as soon as someone else called her the same name I turned on them. She was my sister I could call her names but no-one else could. Loving family or friends are a strong team. Self-love is something else we sometimes struggle with, but we need to love ourselves, (not too much), before we can really love others. Agape is unconditional love which is so amazing. I am sure that most of us have experienced it at some time probably when we have done something bad and have worried about telling the person about it and yet they have continued to love us ,. God demonstrates this love to us all. One of the most quoted verses in the Bible is John 3.16 “God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life”. What a statement of love that is.
This month’s book club read reflects on love too. Peaches for Monsieur le Curé by Joanne Harris
God Bless
Maureen Kendall