For the month of February, my team and I were in Port Elizabeth, a city on the southern tip of Africa. We were partnered with an organization called Love Story, whose slogan is Luke 10:37- “Go and do the same…” The same, meaning as Jesus did.
The irony of being placed at Love Story in the month of Valentine’s Day isn’t lost on me. It’s actually humorous.
There’s an entire day devoted to “love,” and we celebrate it through the tangible action of affection. Yet if, in all our affections and admirations, we aim to only amp up relationships, we’ve gotten love all wrong.
I think that we, as humans, have created a comforting display of what love is. Love is to be the object of desire. Love is to be chosen. Love is feeling all the feels and singing all the songs. Love takes it’s throne on the dreams of little girls everywhere.
But what if love isn’t actually those things at all?
In Port Elizabeth, love was a verb. Love was taking food to shut-ins. Love was going to preschools and singing songs with children. Love wasn’t spoken aloud, just displayed authentically through our choices.
For me, love was allowing random children at food distribution sites to play with my hair. It was offering a smile to an intoxicated, homeless man as I handed him a hot meal. It was sitting in a blind widow’s dusty living room, listening as she shared colorful stories of her life.
The reality is that love can look like many things.
My squad leader Bekah once taught me that at the heart of every person, there is a desire to be known. Isn’t that what we all want? To be known and accepted?
I think that love is knowing a person and then choosing them.
Most evenings in Port Elizabeth, my team and I would help at “City Feed,” which was basically bringing a hot meal to the men, women and children living on the streets of P.E. At City Feed, love was displayed by asking those eating about their lives. It was getting to know them on a personal level, reminding them that they mean something. Love looked like shaking dirty hands and offering to pray for those in need of hope.
For me, the moments that had the most impact were the ones where someone looked at me, actually saw me, and chose me. Its one thing to live up to someone’s expectations and earn an approving look. That’s not love, that’s reward. But when someone initiates contact and reminds me that I matter and am important, I bloom.
Not to sound like a hippie here, but love will always cause life. When we choose to love authentically and without reservation, there’s no other option but the birthing of something abundant.
“We love because He first loved us.” 1 John 4:19
